


be unbroken or be brave again

by RestlessWanderings



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beast Island, Best Friend Squad (She-Ra), Canon-Typical Violence, Catra (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Catra (She-Ra) Redemption, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Found Family, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Made up lore, Magicats, Mental Health Issues, Minor Breakdowns, Mutual Pining, Original Character(s), POV Alternating, Panic Attacks, Scorpia Needs A Hug, Scorpia POV, Slow Burn, Super Pal Trio (She-Ra), animal hunting and gutting but nothing too graphic, canon through season 2, catra centric, catradora, generally canon level violence but like a little bit more, i only know things from the show itself, it's gay and angsty and reflective, major breakdowns, more tags to follow as the story develops, mostly catra POV but with some adora POV, the horde, time to make up an entire culture for the magicats i guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:16:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 71,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RestlessWanderings/pseuds/RestlessWanderings
Summary: In the distance, she can just make out a black dot. Her breath catches in her throat and she coughs. The skiff. Far away and completely unobtainable, even if she could swim well enough to think about trying to catch it.Catra takes a deep, measured breath, her claws digging into the warm sand beneath her. Her heart is beating hard against her chest and her pulse is so loud it nearly drowns out the waves. She wants to hide. Wants to find somewhere dark and small and wait for it all to be over.---or: the one where hordak sends catra to Beast Island after nearly killing her with his fancy atmosphere thing. on the Island, catra finds pieces of herself she didn't know were missing and comes to realize truths she probably should've figured out a while ago. mostly, though, this story is about growth and redemption.





	1. cling to that horizon

**Author's Note:**

> the main title is from a hozier song i think - mostly i just liked it and felt it fit the overall vibe of this piece. hopefully i'll be updating every weel/week and a half. i've already got the first couple of chapters written bc i REFUSE for this to be a forever WIP okay, i refuse, i'm gonna fuckin finish this WIP sO HELP ME GODS

Her claws scrape at her throat, desperate to remove hands that aren’t there. She gasps for air and, finding none, feels the panic begin to well and truly set in.

“Lord Hordak,” she says – or, tries. But her lungs are empty. Instead, she gapes and for a wild moment can’t help but empathize with the fish she used to catch when she was younger in a creek Adora and she had found and – 

She can’t keep up with the memory. Her nostrils flare and she collapses onto her knees, eyes never leaving Lord Hordak’s.

He smirks down at her, bending close enough that she should be able to smell his breath. “Amazing, isn’t it? Remove one simple chemical from the atmosphere and all of your bluster vanishes.”

Her pulse pounds in her ears and everything hurts, a pain she’s never felt and can’t describe. All she knows is that she’d rather be at the mercy of Shadow Weaver at her worst than ever go through this again.

Which. She might not if the gleam in Hordak’s eyes has anything to say about it.

Catra collapses further, like a building on fire, and curls onto her side, reaching out for someone who had abandoned her months ago, who wouldn’t come back even if she begged. 

Her vision wavers and darkens, and she pretends she’s going to sleep.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

Her sense of smell is the first thing to return. Wherever she is, it’s dank, the scent heavy on her tongue. There’s oil and metal and sweat. Overwhelmingly, though, there’s the heady aroma of air – not Fright Zone air or even Whispering Woods air – but _fresh_ air, the kind that she remembers only by some long forgotten instinct.

The last thing Catra remembers is the cold steel of Lord Hordak’s floor beneath her knees and his eyes glowing at her through the growing darkness.

She swallows, wincing at the pain in her throat. Her movement must have been spotted by someone because not a moment later there are hands on her, too tight, their fingers wrapped around her forearms. A sharp prick in her neck and before she can think of fighting back she’s sinking back into darkness.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

Her head is fuzzy and her mouth dry, and she thinks that there’s nothing she wouldn’t do for some water. She smacks her lips, trying to open her eyes, but they’re heavier than she ever remembers them being.

She groans and tries to shake her head to clear the fog, but can’t. From somewhere near her she hears someone _tisk_ at her, and a wild flare of indignation catches in her chest.

“Wha –” she can’t get the word out. Her tongue is sand in her mouth, and there are small hands on her neck, and then a prick.

She sinks into darkness again, only just registering the familiar feeling of a skiff and the scent of salt water.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

She comes to when iron claws grab at her. The panic is immediate, the desperate urge to struggle more so, but her head is too fuzzy for her to even try to take stock of the situation. Her lips curl back and she hisses, trying to open her eyes, blindly clawing at whatever’s within reach. But her limbs are heavy, and her fingers respond with little more than an angry twitch.

Catra feels herself being lifted, thrown, and _oh Horde how high up am I how long is the fall what’s beneath me I can’t move I can’t –_

She lands with a thud. Though the ground gives somewhat beneath her the landing still punches the air from her lungs and she struggles to refill them. They feel bruised as if someone had crushed them beneath an iron grip _. Lord Hordak_. She chokes on air, her throat drier than it’s ever been, and spends the next however many minutes desperately trying to remember how to breathe.

When she gets her breathing under control she takes stock of the situation. She tests her limbs – responsive, but barely so. They’re tingling though, trying to awaken from whatever sedative she was given, and relief floods her. It’s wearing off, slowly but surely.

She sniffs, ears twitching, trying to take in everything at once. Salty air. Water. Some heady plant scent she remembers encountering once at the water princess’ domain. The crash of waves. Sand in her fur, her skin already itching with it. A breeze lightly tugging at her.

She brings a hand up slowly, annoyingly so, to rub at her eyes, removing the crud that’s gathered there. Still, she doesn’t open them. Maybe if she keeps them closed she won’t have to face reality. Won’t have to face just how far she’s fallen from Lord Hordak’s good graces.

She snarls at herself. _No_.

The sun is low in the sky, reflecting harshly on the water. Catra squints, blinking, eyes watering from the pain, but she refuses to fully close them to shield herself. Slowly, arms trembling, she lifts herself into a sitting position, peering across the water, the enormity of it setting in.

Her fur fluffs up a bit.  _I’ve never seen so much water in all of Etheria,_ she thinks, mouth dropping a bit in awe. It's seemingly endless, the water – no other shoreline in sight. Just the sky and the waves, and something about it makes her want to curl up somewhere until she stops feeling so small.

In the distance, she can just make out a black dot. Her breath catches in her throat and she coughs. The skiff. Far away and completely unobtainable, even if she could swim well enough to think about trying to catch it.

Catra takes a deep, measured breath, her claws digging into the warm sand beneath her. Her heart is beating hard against her chest and her pulse is so loud it nearly drowns out the waves. She wants to hide. Wants to find somewhere dark and small and wait for it all to be over. 

 _This is a test_ , she thinks, and the thought settles her. A test. She’s done tests a thousand times in a thousand different ways. She defied Lord Hordak, and this is her punishment. Pass the test and she’ll have proved her worth again.

Her ears twitch, turning backward, and she keeps her gaze focused ahead. No footsteps behind her, just the rustle of leaves from the wind, but the fur on the back of her neck refuses to lie flat. Someone – or, knowing Lord Hordak, some _thing_ – is watching her. But there’s no sound of approach so she lets herself relax, just a little, just enough to clench and unclench her muscles to get feeling back in them.

Shelter and water. That’s what she needs to find. A headache has nestled behind her eyes that must mean the onset of dehydration, and if the parched burning in her throat is any indication, it’s fresh water she ought to find first.

Catra looks around. The strip of beach is small, almost laughably so. Enough room for a single ship to dock if pressed, but the dark, rocky outcroppings mean it’d be too risky. Unless the mission was of utmost importance, she wouldn’t risk it. The outcroppings quickly morph into steep, jagged cliffs. There are some areas that look smooth enough that even she might have trouble finding a handhold.

Twisting, she looks behind her, dismayed that the cliffs continue all around. She squints, focusing on the stone, and can just make out a thin, crumbling pathway winding up towards a thick wall of trees. She huffs, tail twitching in annoyance. _Great, climbing. Just what I need when I’ve been without food and water for Horde knows how long. Perfect._

Catra turns and flexes her arms, sniffing again and wishing that her tongue wasn’t so dry so that she could better taste the air. Nothing except salt water and that heavy plant scent. Hints of wet dirt, too, and something in her relaxes the tiniest bit. Wherever she is, at least it’s not made up of only sand.

She kneads her legs, needing to move, needing to be able to trust them to carry her. They’re fuzzy but they’re tingling, and she focuses for a few minutes on the rhythm of her hands digging into her muscles. As she does a buzzing noise causes her to flick her ears, and she snatches the bug from the air, opening her palm to look at it. It’s a regular fly, nothing special, but flies are food for bigger animals, which are food for even bigger, and so on and so on, and Catra heaves a sigh of relief she hadn’t known she was harboring. Insects mean a food chain. This isn’t a barren place with some trees and rocks. It can be harvested.

As she stands she shakes the fly’s corpse from her hands and takes another deep, measured breath. Reaches up to fix the mask on her face, making sure it’s not crooked. Her feet sink somewhat into the rough sand. A fierce wind gusts and she can’t feel it but she can hear the resulting rustle of leaves. The sun is nearly set, grey light overtaking red, and she soaks in the last vestiges of warmth.

Her chest clenches, her eyes stinging, and she forces the feeling down so hard that she’s almost shocked at the numbness that overtakes her. She shrugs it off and turns, casting a long, lean shadow on the sand in front of her. Her first few steps are wobbly and her tail lashes out on instinct to balance her. Within moments Catra’s adapted, her feet sure on the shifting sands. The path isn’t far away – the length of two skiffs, maybe two and a half, and the ground morphs from sand to pebbles within the first few steps.

It’s slow going. The ground is dry and there’s little plant life to hold it all together. Handholds crumble with the slightest weight, and the longer she climbs the worse her headache gets. Most of the time she’s on all fours to distribute her weight and for better balance, picking her way up the switchback with sweat soaking her fur.

The higher she makes it the more she feels the wind tug at her fur, and more than once it gusts so hard that it nearly rips her from the cliff face. She shivers in the face of it, her fur not thick enough to protect her, and flexes her claws. Her hands and feet ache from how deeply she has to dig them into the ground to get a proper grip, and by the time she finally makes it to the top of the path she’s panting from exertion, sweat soaking into her clothing.

Catra takes a moment to rest and catch her breath. The sky is a dark grey-blue, and the very atmosphere seems to swirl like a tide. It’s weird, watching the slow-moving air – the Fright Zone was always too lit up and smoggy to properly see the night sky, and as time wears on Catra finds herself unwilling to look away from the tapestry unfolding before her. _I didn’t know the sky did that,_ she thinks. She never took the chance to before – at the field next to Brightmoon or at Entrapta’s castle – to rest. To take it all in. But what was the harm now, of spending just a few more minutes wrapped up in the hushed, falling nighttime? The moons, the far off space dust, the way the air moves like clouds but slower, like time really _doesn’t_ have any hold over it. It’s just thin, shimmery curtains swaying to the winds of the moons.

Finally, she stands. Throws her shoulders back and straightens her spine. Enough stalling. There’s a mission and by Horde, she’s going to complete it. Not just complete it, but excel at it. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and she nods to herself. Water. If she keeps moving she’ll be able to keep herself warm, but another few hours without water and she might get too weak to find any. Catra turns away from the cliff edge and walks towards the forest, shivering as another harsh gust of wind swipes at her.

She doesn’t hesitate at the forest’s edge. Keeping her ears and eyes peeled, she steps confidently over the boundary, pretending ignorance at the feeling of eyes on her. Whatever or whoever is watching her hasn’t made a move, and until they do she has more important things to worry about than a silent watcher.

She keeps her ears perked though, just in case. Caution above all else.

After a few minutes of mindless wandering, Catra pauses and closes her eyes. Takes a deep breath and holds it. Slowly swivels her ears around, listening for the tell-tale babble of a running water source.

What she hears is _life_ , utterly uninhibited. Insects buzz around her. There are small creatures – mice, hopefully – foraging in the leaf litter around her. There are a couple of birds calling and the unmistakable timbre of an owl. The rustling of leaves and creaking of branches. Catra scowls, about to try another tactic, when she hears it. Her ears twitch, trying to pinpoint, and – _there!_ She opens her eyes, unable to stop the relieved grin from spreading across her face, and heads towards the sound. 

It’s not far – she scrambles over a couple of fallen trees, her limbs still weak. Her steps aren’t nearly as quiet as they normally are, and she almost tries to quiet herself, but the thought of water makes everything seem unimportant. She can practically taste it, and if she has to stumble around like Kyle to get to it then that’s what she’s going to do.

She ducks under branches, nearly blacking out each time as her head pounds and her heart beats hard against her chest. Many times it’s her tail instinctively lashing out to balance her that saves her from falling on her face. Still, there are close calls, and when she misjudges the placement of her right hand on a tree trunk she collapses onto the ground. She groans, unwilling to move. _This is worse than those high-intensity training sessions Shadow Weaver made us do,_ she thinks.

With a sigh she heaves herself up onto her elbows, content to crawl the rest of the way there, but freezes as her eyes catch a glint of moonlight on the ground. _Oh thank Hordak_ , she thinks, and with leaps forward, digging her back claws into the dirt to propel herself, scrabbling for the water in front of her. The brook is thin, barely wider than her forearm, but from what she can see it’s fast moving and clear. She dips her hand in and can taste the icy water through her palms. She grins, eyes burning, and lowers her face to drink.

It’s degrading for such a high ranking member of the Horde to do such a thing, but for the life of her, she can’t care. Each sip is heaven on her tongue, and she finally understands Kyle’s strange metaphor of water being like ichor on a hot day. He’d quoted it from some text he’d stumbled across in the restricted section of the library, and Shadow Weaver had nearly tanned his hide for spouting such “useless, inane drivel.” The water is cold enough to hurt her throat, and she feels it run down to her stomach, sloshing in the emptiness.

In the back of her mind, she knows she probably should’ve boiled the water before drinking it, but surely she can be excused. It feels like eons since she had a sip – besides, if she gets sick she may as well get completely sick, rather than a little.

Sated, Catra gasps, nearly choking on the water. She catches her breath, hands still in the water, knees sinking into the muddy bank. Closing her eyes again, her muscles tremble, exhaustion pulling at her, and her head pounds. Her ears flick at the gnats surrounding her. She lets them continue their instinctive movement, keeping her muscles lax as she focuses. The hair on the back of her neck has flattened somewhat but there’s an instinctive inkling in her gut that prevents it from lying down completely.

She can’t fully settle. There’s someone watching her. It can’t be an animal – it would’ve attacked by now, or run scared, or maybe even come up to her in innocent curiosity, wanting to know what creature has invaded its territory.

No, this is a person. This is someone tracking her, keeping tabs on her, seeing what she does before they do anything. They’re deciding their next play.

She grins. Opens her eyes. May as well keep tabs on them while she finds some shelter. Catra dips her head again and takes another few sips of water. She’ll keep close to this brook, especially if she doesn’t get sick from the water. If all else fails, she’ll be able to wash up later. She stands, stretches until her back pops, and shakes out her hair. Sand falls in copious amounts, and she sighs, unbelievably glad there are no mirrors around. There’s no doubt in her mind that she looks like an absolute horror, caked with sand, mud, water, and Horde knows what else. 

Her feet are heavy, and after a few moments she gives up any pretense to stealth as she pads along the bank of the brook, heading upstream. Her stomach growls but she shoves the thought of food away. She’s gone longer without something to eat – she can last a few more days until it becomes too persistent to ignore.

As she walks the brook grows wider, deeper, until it’s a proper stream. The moon is nearly full, its light blanketing the forest. The wind is still blowing, and a small part of her regrets drinking the water so enthusiastically, if only because some of her fur is wet and she’s colder than she’d like to be. Her tail tip twitches with each moving shadow, but whatever adrenaline that was keeping her going has all but faded. Her ears droop, her eyelids heavy, and she keeps her gaze on the trees. It’ll be easier – safer – to sleep in them, to keep to some sort of high ground.

She keeps walking. Lets her mind drift. The moon, the stars, the crisp, fresh air. The thought comes to her unbidden: _Adora would love this._

Her breath comes out in a wet exhale, her chest tightening. There’s not enough energy to muster up the familiar rage, the betrayal. Not even enough to pull her lips into a snarl. All that’s left is hurt. Not the white-hot hurt that’s been driving her since Adora abandoned her, but the aching hurt, the one that’s been acting like an undercurrent. Less noticeable but far more dangerous.

Adora would keep up a steady stream of chatter, pointing out different plants and explaining their uses. She’d know if the brook was safe to drink from in a heartbeat, and would probably have found food and shelter already. Adora would have already confronted Catra’s stalker, already sussed out if they were friend or foe. Adore would have – 

“Stop it!” Catra yells – or, tries to, but they come out little more than a croak. She shakes herself and immediately stops as the pain in her head intensifies, cutting through any higher thought processes. Cutting through thoughts of Adora.

 _It doesn’t matter, because she’s not here_ , Catra thinks, looking up into the trees. She squints to curb the burning in her eyes and to spot a suitable place to sleep. Shivering, she shrugs and reaches out to the nearest tree, claws digging into its bark.

It doesn’t matter if the tree is strong enough, or comfortable enough, or whatever enough. It just needs to last her a night. So with a grunt, she hauls herself up, snaking through the tangle of limbs before finding a decent enough branch to sleep on. It’s large, fat, and another branch has morphed into it somewhat, creating a sort of dip that she can snuggle into. 

With deft movements she strips the leaves of the nearest branches, packing them together just thick enough that she won’t get splinters. She sighs, lets her shoulders droop, and crawls in, curling into herself as tight as she can. Pinning her ears to her head, she wraps her tail around herself and tries desperately not to wish she were back in her shared bed with Adora, her spine pressed up against the blonde’s legs.

There’s a rustle to her left as she’s drifting off, and her ears flick towards it, but she doesn’t stir. _Let them come_ , she thinks, already feeling herself slipping away into sleep. _I can take it._


	2. breathe in, breathe out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! quick shout out to patheticfrog, my beta reader, and also . who pointed out to me that etheria doesn't have stars! i'd completely forgotten, and it also made me remember that etheria has multiple moons. i've gone back to chapter one to fix that, but it doesn't affect the plot at all, so don't reread unless u want to
> 
> also also! quick trigger warnings for the hunting and gutting of animals this chapter - nothing terribly graphic, but i figured it'd be best to warn y'all just in case
> 
> i'm hoping to update every friday evening - at the latest, the wednesday after. my work schedule is super changeable so i never really know when exactly i'm gonna have time to write lol
> 
> enjoy!

Catra wakes without preamble, shaking off the remnants of an already forgotten dream, and takes stock. Her head no longer aches but she’s still thirsty – not overtly so, but enough to know she hasn’t quite escaped dehydration yet. She’s not all that hungry, now that she focuses on her stomach, and figures that’s probably not the best sign.

She shrugs as she sits up. She’ll get to food eventually. Her limbs are stiff from her motionless sleep and she blinks at the weak sunlight streaming through the trees. It’s early morning, then. Shifting, she tucks her legs under her and stretches out her back, then sits. The soft light mixes in with the morning mist that hugs the forest floor and she stares at it for a while, letting her mind go thoughtless and fuzzy.

Her ears swivel about, catching the new sounds around her, and her tail swings lazily back and forth, the tip twitching every now and again. Within minutes she stills, waiting, eyes locked onto a bird flitting about on the tree limbs near her. It’s red, startlingly so, with a black mask and black tail. The beak is red as well, short – _probably for picking berries and seeds,_ Catra decides, thinking back to all of those early days in the Horde, where her classes focused more on the identification of food sources than how to kill someone in a few quick moves.

The bird hops closer and every muscle in Catra’s body stills. Her ears prick, trained onto the twittering creature, and her breathing shallows. She sniffs the air, drawing in the bird’s delicious scent. Her mouth waters. Without conscious effort, she shifts, slowly and surely, into a crouch. She waits. The bird pecks at the tree, then hops onto a branch only a couple of feet away from her. It stares at her, black eyes round and unafraid, and before it can do anything Catra is pouncing. 

Her aim is true – the bird is in her claws before she realizes what she’s done, and then in her mouth before she can stop herself from ignoring the instinct. The blood is warm on her tongue, deliciously so, and she takes a few seconds to rip away some of the feathers before eating as much as she can. Bones, organs, meat, flesh – she eats all of it, uncaring, her heart pounding hard against her chest.

It takes a few seconds for her to realize what she’s done and when she does she recoils, disgust threatening to send everything back up. She shivers. Wipes at her mouth. There’s a memory lingering in the back of her mind, warm and golden-hued, of hands plucking the flight feathers from a bluebird and setting it down on the ground so she could practice hunting.

Catra shakes the memory away and drops the carcass, watching as it bounces off a few branches before hitting the ground with a muted thump. _Instinct is all well and good until it gets you killed,_ she thinks. The Horde had been stringent in that regard. Instinct and panic – helpful until it’s not.

Leaping to the branches below, she leaves her kill to rot. There’s a niggling thought that she ought to bury it but she ignores it. Instead, she heads for the small brook, first to drink and then to wash the muck from herself. The water is as clear and fast flowing as it was the night before so she doesn’t hesitate to lower her head and drink. Then she scrubs at her face, ignoring the chill, and begins working on her hair, the rest of her fur, and her clothes.

Again, her mind wanders. Grooming is rote, now, and she could do it asleep – probably has, at some point, after a strenuous, exhausting training simulation. She hums low in her throat, scrubbing at a patch of dried dirt on her shoulder. Shadow Weaver had talked to her once. Actually talked to her as if she were another human being, as if she were more than just a weapon and a way to keep Adora in line. There’d been a lot the old crone had said, but one thing had always stuck out to her.

_“You must protect her,” Shadow Weaver hissed, drawing herself up. “She’s the best we’ve got, but she still panics every once and awhile. Until she’s overcome it, you must be the one with the cooler head, Catra. Do you understand?”_

And she had – she’d taken to observing Adora with more purpose, trying to see the flaws in her friend’s armor. Again and again, the line was drawn: Adora staying hours after an exercise, tightening her form until she perfected it, then crawling back into the bunks and burying her face into the comforter to muffle her sobs.

Catra’d figured it out in a week: expectation. Stack enough on Adora’s shoulders until the stress gets too much and she’ll crumble under the weight of it. And while the Horde’s expectations were a high bar to clear, it wasn’t those that would eventually crack Adora’s armor – it was Adora’s expectations of herself. To be the perfect soldier, to be perfect Force Captain, to be _perfect._

Catra still isn’t sure how she was supposed to protect Adora from herself. All she could do within the steel confines of the Horde was sneak in a look, a touch, a snack. Small things. Nothing that could be overheard, nothing that could be misinterpreted by their squad.

But Adora had always known, her blue eyes almost glowing every time Catra brushed up against her, that small smile playing at the corners of her lips.

Catra growls and hits the water. “Shut up!” she yells, clenching her hands into fists. “Shut up shut up shut up!” Her hands dive into the cold water and grab, snatching handfuls of muck and rocks. She flings them downstream with all her strength, again and again until her chest is heaving and she’s shivering from staying in the water for so long. Her hands ache from the tension and she rubs them, keeping her claws out.

Around her the birds keep singing, the sun keeps shining, and the trees keep swaying in the wind. Nothing’s changed. It feels like something has, though, and she can’t shake it. So she ignores it. There’s a mission, after all. She steps out of the stream, groaning. Her fur is soaked through, as is her clothing. She sighs and looks for a soft patch of ground, finding one a few feet away. The sunlight is warm and strong, and though the wind is steady it’s barely hitting the ground. She sits on the grass, letting the light warm and dry her, her tail twitching.

As the minutes pass by, her tail begins wagging, softly thumping the ground. It’s the most obvious tell she has, but she can’t control it. Not when she was younger and Shadow Weaver was beating her for her existence, and not now, in this strange place, where there was definitely some unknown thing watching her.

The stranger’s gaze makes her fur fluff up a bit and her ears angle behind her. She tracks the almost silent movements of the stranger, how they step lightly and calmly, utterly unhurried. _Familiar with the terrain,_ she thinks, keeping her gaze on the stream, watching some small, pinkish creature forage among the streambed.

She waits. Better to let the stranger make the first move. There’s no reconnaissance she can turn to; no backup she can call. The odds are stacked against her, and she’d rather not wait for them to pounce while she’s peeing, or sleeping, or eating, or doing any number of things that could be interrupted by an attack.

Time passes. The sun gets higher in the sky. Her stomach growls, insistent, but she ignores it. Hunting takes all the focus in the world and splitting her concentration between the hunt and the stranger means she’s half-assing it either way. Might as well whole-ass the one thing that might be out to kill her.

But there’s only so much time she can wait. Perhaps if she’d been back in the Fright Zone or its outskirts she could’ve waited longer, but it’s too much in this new place. There’re too many variables she can’t account for.

“Well,” she drawls, inspecting her claws. “You gonna come and say hello or keep skulking?”

She feels more than hears the stranger’s surprise. Lifting her face to the breeze she sniffs, tasting the air. Between all of the leaf litter and stream smells there’s an undercurrent of sweat with a hint of musk. It’s something that she feels like she’s smelled before but she can’t quite place it in her memory. It’s as strange as it is familiar.

The pause drags on and Catra frowns, turning towards the trees. “I won’t bite,” she says, grinning. “Not much, at least.”

Her ears, forward and alert, twitch. The sound is faint enough that she thinks she’s misheard, but as her hackles slowly begin to flatten she knows she hasn’t. The stranger is fleeing, nearly silent except for the scrape of leaf on leaf.

She huffs. Fine. She’ll deal with that later. For now, she needs to build some sort of shelter. Find a place she can construct a base camp. She stands and stretches again, shaking her hair out. It’s still tangled, annoyingly so, but she leaves it be. Whatever this mission is, she’ll be back to the Horde in no time. A few days at most.  

And maybe that’s when it hits her – just how far away she is from the Horde and how much of a new place this is, with dangers she doesn’t know about, with someone stalking her, with nothing but her claws and her wits. A sharp pain hits her in her collarbone and she struggles to breathe around it. There are too many variables. What are the exact parameters of the mission? What’s her main goal? More specifically, what’s the goal that Lord Hordak wants her to accomplish? Is she here to prove her strength, her wits, her agility, or something else? Maybe everything?

Her hands clench so tightly her claws break skin. _Am I here to prove I’m worthy of being kept alive?_

Catra’s chest tightens and her breath comes in short, sharp gasps. She snarls, unclenching her fists, and slashes at the nearest tree. Again. Again. Again. Her claws dig deep into the wood, bark and woodchips flying, sap oozing from the wounds and causing the fur on her palms and forearms to mat. She swipes at the tree a few more times, relishing in being able to destroy something. The white noise in her head crescendos then wanes, until finally, it stops altogether.

She takes a deep, calming breath, focusing on the expansion of her ribcage.

“I’m fine,” she says, hoping that if the birds hear her then maybe it’ll be true. “I’m fine. I’ll figure it out. I’ll get home. It’ll be fine.”

Her hands ache and she groans, looking at the sticky fur. There are a few splinters here and there, lodged deep into the meat of her palms, and a couple of cuts that are bleeding sluggishly. Her tail twitches and she hisses as she digs the bits of wood from her hands. She could dip them into the stream to clean them better, but decides against it. She’s had enough of water, no matter how vital to her continued survival it may be.

Catra licks her hands and forearms until they’re clean, then continues licking the inside of her right wrist. She thinks over her options. She could wander around and get her bearings. After all, she doesn’t know where in Etheria she is and seeing all of that salt water doesn’t help matters. If she were to guess, she’d say she was on an island, but she rejects the idea. The closest island to Etheria is Beast Island, and though she’s never been, she’s heard the stories: an island teeming with massive, dangerous, unpredictable beasts that want nothing more than to kill.

The Horde, she’s learned, has its fair share of fairy tales. The Princesses are not as bloodthirsty and intelligent as she’s been lead to believe. Nor does Octavia eat weak, crybaby cadets if they don’t shape up as quickly as they should. But she’s seen the aftermath of a trip to Beast Island. She’d been young, stupid, and bored, and had snuck out of the dormitories one night as an elite group of soldiers had returned from a mission. Many had died, and the ones that hadn’t were riddled with claw and teeth marks.

She shivers at the memory. Shadow Weaver hadn’t reacted well the next morning, and it had been one of the few times Catra had truly, utterly believed she was about to die by Shadow Weaver’s magic.

But she hadn’t.

There were times she wished she had.

Her tail swishes angrily. She _could_ track down the stranger. Hopefully, their scent trail would lead her right to their camp and maybe she’d get some sort of idea as to what her exact mission here was.

She pauses her licking, wincing at the thin spot in her fur. The idea is stupid. She can’t just waltz into enemy camp without backup. Maybe the stranger was banking on her curiosity and was leading her into a trap. There’s no medical team to snatch supplies from if she gets injured, no one to watch her back and –

The thought stops her cold. _I’m not being watched,_ she thinks, swaying a bit. She’d been watched since she came to the Horde. By Adora, Shadow Weaver, Lord Hordak, the Imp, Scorpia, the other cadets – everyone. Someone was always watching.

But not out here. At least, not at the moment. She sniffs the air again and swivels her ears. No one. Nothing but animals and plants. She’s alone.

“Enough,” she snarls, shoving it all away. She’s spent too much time in her head already. Too much time thinking, not enough time doing. 

Her stomach gurgles. The little bird had sated for a moment, but now her hunger is pressing at her ribs and demanding to be heard. She nods to herself. She’ll hunt, build up some sort of shelter, and go from there. She could find the stranger’s trail later if she really wanted to, but there was little doubt in her mind that she’d be left alone for too much longer. All she’d done was scare off the reconnaissance gatherer. The stranger, whoever they are, isn’t done with her. Not yet.

Catra takes one more deep, calming breath to settle herself and to taste the air. Her scuffle with the tree hasn’t done her any favors – the noise has scared some of the birds off, and whatever mice that were digging around in the leaf litter are gone. She shrugs. Better to keep moving, especially without the company of her watcher.

Leaping over the stream is easy. She’s almost silent on her feet, ghosting through the tall, swaying grasses, her ears twitching. Taking down prey with a spear would be more fitting of her Force Captain rank, but she has claws. She’s all the weapon she needs. 

The Horde, for all of its faults, pushed survival training to the point of neurosis. She’d always figured the Horde was overcompensating for lack of any extracurricular activities not involving fighting or chores. After all, the Whispering Woods was big, but when was she ever going to get _that_ lost? Between her innate sense of direction and Adora’s love of maps and orienteering –

She shakes her head. She hadn’t paid all that much attention in the survival classes because she always figured Adora would be right beside her. As long as they were together, they could survive anything.

Catra scoffs, forcing herself to not kick at the pebbles around her. So much for promises.

Walking is normally mindless for her, but she keeps herself focused. There are too many memories to fall into, too much hurt to deal with. Better to box it all up and throw it somewhere she’ll never have to think about it again.

A breeze ruffles her fur and she sniffs again, nose twitching. Her eyes peer through the forest, searching for an animal trail. It’s not long until she finds one, and when she does she approaches it with the wind in her face. She’s silent, stepping through the greenery, making sure any accidental noise is masked by the swaying tree limbs above her. In position, she crouches and waits.

Despite what anyone would say, Catra can be patient. There’s a sort of anticipation in the waiting that she revels in, whether it’s waiting for a trap to spring or waiting for her next meal. Her tail tip twitches. A fuzzy sensation settles onto her, seeping into her thoughts until the world around her is muffled, as if she’s stuck cloth in her ears. Her muscles relax but don’t melt into the ground, still ready to spring at a moment’s notice. Her eyes stay trained onto the small dirt path and her breathing settles into deep, slow breaths.

She waits.

Movement. Rustling of grass. Her muscles tighten. The fuzziness in her mind melts away. She shifts her weight, ever so slightly, to her feet. Warm, meaty scent washes over her. Fur in her sight line and she leaps, claws outstretched and sinking deep into muscle and sinew. Whatever she’s caught lets out a scream of panic before her teeth are at its neck, silencing it. 

She grins into her kill, it’s blood on her tongue, and takes a few moments to revel in the sensation of it. Crouching over it, her tail lashing behind her, her ears twitching, eyes flitting about in case some unknown assailant comes to try and take the carcass away from her. She’s trembling, blood racing through her veins, heart beating hard against her chest.

She can’t remember the last time she felt so _good._

The feeling doesn’t last. After a few moments revulsion turns her stomach and she spits out the kill, wiping at her tongue to get the taste out of her mouth before remembering her hands are also covered in blood. She turns away and gags, shuddering, and tries not to think about just how good the blood tastes on her tongue.

Unbidden, Shadow Weaver’s voice swirls inside her head: _“You’re nothing but a filthy animal. A stray. No one wants you here, you beast.”_

Catra whimpers, ears flattening, and crouches. No hit comes, but somehow she still feels it, and she snarls into the ground.

“I’m not an animal!” she yells, voice breaking.

 _Liar!_ Shadow Weaver hisses back, her voice echoing in Catra’s mind.

Catra curls in on herself and stays that way for a time, trembling, cold despite the sunlight filtering through the trees. Each breath comes out as a high pitched whine due to the lump in her throat, and her claws dig into the ground so deep they hurt.

After a while, though, her muscles unclench and she’s able to open her eyes. The sun is lower in the sky than she’d like, but other than that there’s been no change. She sniffs. The only new scent is that of the carcass behind her, and her hands itch unpleasantly at the reminder of the dried blood caking them.

Her stomach growls, ever insistent, and she steels herself.

“This is ridiculous,” she says, sitting up and shaking herself. “You’re a Force Captain. Act like it.”

So she acts like it.

Turning, she inspects her kill. It’s a rabbit, but larger than any she’s ever seen before. She’ll need a fire to cook it, and she’ll need to gut it as quickly as possible, especially since she doesn’t know quite how much time has passed since she killed it. She touches the fur, petting it for a moment. It’s soft, still warm. If she were to find a couple more she could make a jacket from it.

She leaves the kill where it is, not wanting to move it, and begins to build a fire. It’s perhaps the one survival thing she can do without thinking, only because Adora had never quite gotten the hang of it. She gathers some dried grasses and twigs, throwing them together in a pile. Then she inspects some of the larger bits of wood scattered about, assessing which would be the best to make a spark with. When she finds what she’s looking for she strips the bark off of both pieces of wood. Then she places the end of one stick on top of the bit of wood and begins rapidly brushing her hands together, the stick in between her palms. Her palms sting, but she ignores them. It’s hypnotic, almost, watching as the wood begins to blacken, smoke, and eventually produce embers. Within a few minutes, she coaxes a fire into existence and she grins.

Then she blows out a breath. She needs to gut the rabbit.

Grabbing the rabbit, she sets it down next to the fire, settling in beside it. The ground is relatively flat – it’ll have to do. She pinches the hide on the rabbit’s back and, using her claws, makes a small cut. Then she hooks her fingers under the skin and pulls – one end towards the head and the other towards the rear. Once the hide is off, she snaps the ankles to remove the feet, slices off the tail, and begins to cut off the head.

It’s messy, bloody work, but in the end she manages to get a mostly intact carcass for her troubles. She takes a few moments to look for a decent stick and shoves the rabbit onto it, growling in frustration when it doesn’t stay. Getting up, she snatches a handful of long grass and returns to the fire, carefully tying the rabbit to the stick, and proceeds to slowly turn the meat over the fire and wait.

She huffs. All she’s done today is wait, it seems. The sun is close to the horizon. She must’ve waited hours for this rabbit, but for the life of her, she doesn’t feel like she has. Her muscles aren’t sore or tight. Time had, it seems, has fast-forwarded. Hours had turned into minutes. She takes a moment to walk to the edge of the stream and was her hands and gurgle some water.

When done, the meat is juicy, tender, and delicious. She rips into it, teeth sinking deep into muscle. Something inside of her settles. Her ears flick. Whatever the feeling is that’s bubbling up inside of her chest, she ignores it. There are still too many things to do, too many things to worry about, without having to analyze herself.

“This isn’t some mission to find yourself,” she mumbles around a mouthful of meat. “Shut up.”

As the sun sets, the moons of Etheria brighten the sky. Sometimes the moons are so bright it feels as though it’s still daytime, but not this time. Only one of the moons is reflecting any decent light, coming down from its fullness of last night. Or maybe building up to fullness. Catra had never quite gotten the hang of any of the phases of the moons. She’d never thought that kind of knowledge would come in handy.

Despite the cool wind blowing in, she lets the fire die down once she’s done eating. The embers cast an eerie glow around her, and it’s only because of the embers’ light that she catches the reflection of eyes from the undergrowth.

Fur fluffing up, she holds back a hiss.

The watcher is back.


	3. flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! shout out to my beta reader patheticfrog whomst is my very best friend
> 
> no special warnings for this chap
> 
> enjoy!

Catra’s heart beats hard against her chest. Her tail lashes hard against the ground, kicking up a bit of dust. Eyes on the watcher, she rotates her ears, listening. Where there’s one there could be more but it seems as if, for the moment, it’s just her and the interloper.

“I see you,” she says, and despite her voice being barely above a whisper, she knows the watcher heard her. The eyes seem to narrow, the pinpricks of reflected light getting smaller before they lower themselves to the ground.

Crouching, maybe, or sitting. Catra stands. “I didn’t think you’d catch up with me this fast,” she says. _That was inconvenient of you,_ she thinks.

The eyes blink.

Catra cocks her head to the side. “What? Cat got your tongue?”

The eyes blink.

She backs up until her back touches the tree she’s been sheltering under. There a few boulders to the right of her that act as a wall, and to the left of her is the stream.

“Come on,” she says, tail swishing, “don’t you want to say hi?”

The eyes blink again, and Catra smothers a growl of frustration. If she can get them to lunge at her, she can use the tree and boulders as a cage and get some answers.

She smirks, leaning harder against the tree, letting the stress roll off her shoulders. “What, too scared? I can’t be _that_ intimidating.”

Catra meets the eyes and stares, letting her vision focus on them and her other senses reach out. Nothing out of the ordinary – or what she assumes to be ordinary – can be heard, but there’s a scent that gets caught up in her nose and makes her nostrils flare. It’s earthy, like freshly tilled dirt, but soft too. It dances around the back of her mind and makes her tail tip twitch. She knows this scent – despite everything her fur lies back down a bit at the smell – but for the life of her, she can’t place it.

 _Maybe they visited the Horde at one point,_ she thinks. The thought is banished quickly. It rubs her the wrong way, imagining that scent in the Fright Zone.

Shaking herself, she shrugs. “I’ve got better things to do than get into a staring contest with you,” she says, pushing herself from the tree and using her foot to scrape dirt onto the dying embers of her campfire.

She doesn’t, really, have better things to do, but she’d rather be moving. There’s too much nervous energy in her to stay still, so she turns her back on the watcher and leaps into the tree, searching for a place to rest. The branches aren’t thick but they’re strong, and she finds two limbs growing nearly parallel with one another about halfway up the tree. It’ll have to do.

Nodding, she climbs back down, purposefully pretending to struggle a little bit. There’s an advantage, after all, in being underestimated.

While she gathers the branches she’ll need for the supports for her bed, she keeps her ears on the watcher. They haven’t moved, and seem almost content with their mission, watching as she drags two heavy limbs up into the tree and lashes them to the tree’s branches with some tall grasses. She drops to the ground again, gathering up leafy boughs to make the bed somewhat comfortable, and ascends.

The bed is messy, but it’ll hold for the night, and that’s all that matters. While not exactly comfortable, it’s no worse than the beds in the dormitories, and at least here she doesn’t have to listen to Rogelio’s snoring.

She settles in, back to the tree, pulling her knees to her chest. She rests her chin on them, peering out into the night. Her fire’s long since died out. Though she can’t see the watcher she knows they’re still there. Her fur is only half-fluffed up as if it can’t make up its mind as to whether the watcher is a threat or not. There’s a small but insistent pebble of anxiety in her stomach, though, and she steels herself for a long night.

The wind picks up and Catra shivers, running her hands up and down her arms. She wants a fire but can’t stand the thought of whoever’s attention she’ll catch. Curling tighter into herself, she easily shrugs away the errant wish to be back in the Fright Zone, settling down into Adora’s bed, her back pressed up against the blonde’s shins. The wish and the ache it produces flows through her mind like sand, gone as quickly as it came.

Cupping her hands in front of her mouth, she breathes into them for a few moments before shoving them up her armpits. If the temperature drops too much lower, it won’t matter – she’ll have to make a fire just to keep from freezing her fur off. As the night wears on, though, she can’t make herself move. Something in her gut dismisses any thought to descending the tree, and she’s learned to listen to that feeling.  

After all—last time she didn’t listen to her gut Adorabecame a Princess.

She sighs. Curls her tail around her feet and tries not to follow thatpath of thought. There are other things to worry about. She frowns, balling up her hands and pressing them deep into the muscle underneath her arms, enough to ache.

Again, that question: What’s the mission?

She runs through the lists in her head, gaze moving slowly across the trees, distantly cataloging any movement she spots.

Things she knows: She betrayed Lord Hordak by lying and not telling him about Shadow Weaver manipulating her like someweakling and subsequently escaping. Lord Hordak has some fancy new weapon that makes the atmosphere unbreathable. She’sbeen shipped off to somewhere, and she crossed a vast distance of saltwater tobe deposited here. This is atest. There’s someone watching her. 

Things she doesn’t know: Where exactly she is. Who exactly is watchingher. If the watcher has friends, or a base camp, or weapons. What kinds of creatures are living here and how dangerous they are. What the exact parameters of her mission are. How long this mission will take. How she’ll know when she’s completed the mission. How Lord Hordak will get updates of her progress. If the watcher is part of the Horde, the Rebellion, or some other mysterious third party. How she’ll get back to the Fright Zone once she’s completed her mission. If she’llbe reconditioned upon returning. The state of theWar. 

Catra licks that spot on her right wrist again, the slow strokes of her tongue calming her somewhat.Variables. Toomany out of her control. It seems as if the only thing she can do at the moment is wait everything out and see what happens. 

 _Or,_ she thinks, _I could march up to my new friend and see what’s up._

Her tail twitches. It wouldn’t be the worst idea she’s ever come up with. She’s a soldier. She can take whatever comes her way, even an ambush where she’s outnumbered. Perhaps that’s all the test is—get her back to relying on the basics, and if she excels across the board, she’ll be able to go home. 

It could all be a trap. Is she supposed to confront the watcher or is the watcher supposed to confront her? Does she go with the obvious routes or the less obvious routes? Shadow Weaver prefers tricks; Lord Hordak prefers the straightforward path. Who designed this test, and whose logic should she follow?

She bites at her wrist hard enough to hurt, butnot hard enough to draw blood. Stops applying the pressure thenapplies it again. Again. Again.Again. Maybe she’s supposed to forge her own path? Think less in terms of who-would-do-what butratherwhat’s-more-appropriate-given-the-situation. 

She bites hard, feeling blood well up from her wrist, and immediately starts licking to soothe the small wound. Maybe all it boils down to is whether she can be a good soldier and do what’s expected of her the _way_ it's expected of her. 

Her breath comes in gasps and she presses both hands to her mouth to cover up the sound. She wants Scorpia. For all the one-sided verbal jabs Catra aimed at her, Scorpia always seemed to know what to do and the way it shouldbe done. Lonnie too. If they were here the mission would alreadybe done and over with, and she’d be back in the Fright Zone dealing with those pesky Princesses. 

A shuffling sound comes from below her and she freezes, alarm coiling in her stomach. Taking a few moments to calm her breathing, she listens around her pulse for any sign that whatever’s down there is trying to get to her. When there’s no sound but the susurrus of leaves she relaxes again. 

 _Ears playing tricks,_ she thinks, _that’s all, just –_

But the sound comes again, stopping the thoughtcold. Silently, Catra shifts her weight until she’s peering over the branch that makes up her bed. Through the branches, she can just make out a large, hulking shadow, and her heart leaps into her throat, her fur standing on end.

She forgot to bury the rabbit scraps.

_Idiot!_

Squinting, she glares at the animal. It steps further into the small clearing below her and the panic running through her veins lessens somewhat. It’s not as big as its shadow would suggest, but it definitely doesn’t look like anything she’d want to mess with. Large, broad shoulders with a stocky body. _Predator,_ she thinks. It raises its snout, black beady eyes glinting in the moonlight, and Catra sucks in a sharp, silent breath.

 _Bear,_ she thinks, flattening her ears. Again, those early survival classes are pushed to the forefront of her mind, and again she desperately wishes she’d paid more attention. This bear doesn’t seem to be the climbing type, and some of the stiffness leaks away from her muscles. If she stays in the tree she should be fine.

A shadow catches her gaze and she spots the eyes of the watcher afew skiff-lengths away, perching in the trees.Well. Good to know she won’tbe left aloneanytimesoon.

The bear huffs, lowering its snout to the ground. It smacks its lips and begins gnawing at the remains of her rabbit, easily breaking the bones and consuming them. Catra gulps. Its paws are larger than her head, and she’s never been more content to sit quietly and wait for an enemy to leave.

 _Rogelio and Scorpia could take it,_ she thinks. _Especially with Lonnie as backup._

A high-pitched squeal shatters the relative silence and Catra’s thoughts, scraping against her skin in the worst way. She grits her teeth against it and watches, dumbfounded, as a massive black-brown blur barrels through the undergrowth and heads straight for the bear.

If Catra had enough time, she’d put her head in her hands and sigh. This isn’t how she thought the last two days would go _at all,_ and despite everything, she still finds it surprising that, instead of standing its ground and fighting, the bear leaps into action, hoisting itself up into the trees.

Not just any tree, though, but _Catra’s_ tree.

Catra’s body moves without thought, propelling her from her tree to the one beside hers. The next few seconds pass in a cacophony of crashing branches, thrashing limbs, and that same high-pitched squealgrowing steadily louder.

Her hands whip out and grab the nearest branch, but it snaps under her weight. She’s falling too quickly – can’t twist her body fast enough to catch herself on the next branch, andinstead tumbles through it as it, too, breaks. Hands lashing out, she digs her claws deep into the tree, leaving gouges in thedead wood. 

She growls. Presses herself closer to the wood. The entire tree is lifeless, the wood brittle, and she could scream at the absurdity of it all.

Shadow Weaver’s voice, unwanted: _If you had cased the area properly before making it your campsite this wouldn’t have happened._

Her breath comesin short,sharp gasps as she looks around. All is still, as if the forest is holding its breath to see what will happen next. Her blood goes cold in her veins. _Too close to the ground,_ she thinks, slowly turning her head towards where her campfire had been, dread curdling her stomach.

The boar’s eyes are preternaturally large, almost glowing. Not from the moonlight, though, but from the inside, like someone’s lit a match inside the boar itself. It huffs, opening and closing its mouth a few times to show off wicked looking teeth. Its tusks gleam in the moonlight. It’s larger—too large, really, for what she thought a boar would look like. 

Kyle’s voice, unbidden: _They’ll eat pretty much anything, even meat if they can._

Catra steels herself, her fur fluffed up as much as it can, and hisses, baring her teeth.

The boar snorts once before charging, and Catra has allofthree seconds to drop from the tree and start running. 

She can’t look back. Hears the boar crash into the tree, scream angrily, and then continue after her. She barely feels the ground beneath her feet as she sprints, adrenaline copper at the back of her tongue, her heart beating hard against her chest. She leaps over the stream and leaves her makeshift campsite behind in a blur of suppressed panic.

Part of her wants to smile. This is something she can do—run. Evade. Keep a step ahead of her pursuer. She barely has to tell her body what she wants tobe done—by the time she has the movementis made,the log has been leaped over, the tangle of vines hasbeen avoided, andthe smatterings of rocks have been climbed. 

But she doesn’t know this terrain and within moments of her fleeing the ground beneath her shifts. Becomes less hard and gives out from under her. Faltering, tail lashing out, she slips against the uneven gravel, gravity pulling her down the sudden slope. 

A tide of rocks overtakes her own, and she feels a huff of moist, heavy breath at the back of her neck. Bracing herself for the impact of tusks, she surges forward, tucking her chin to her chest and rolling the rest of the way down. 

It’s not enough. She can’t see the boar, the world spinning, but she feels the air shift and has a second of ice-cold terror before – 

The boar screeches, a sound that goes straight into the marrow of her bones. Digging her feet into the uneven ground, she darts to the side, barely escaping from the path of the boar’s uncontrolled fall. It’s flailing brings up a shower of rocks and she winces as some of them smack into her. Scrabbling across the gravel, she finds solid ground and stands, blinking as the dust clears.

There’s a thin throwing spear lodged into the shoulder of the boar, and Catra only has a few moments to look up at the silhouette of the watcher before the boar is moving again, screaming, heading straight for her. 

She runs. The ground changes again, the trees coming back, and she hisses as thorns dig into her fur. The boar’s pounding footfalls shake the ground and Catra can barely breathe through the tightening of her throat. 

The boar’s too fast. The undergrowth too thick.

 _I’m not going to make it,_ she thinks. 

Her ears twitch and in a moment she’s changing course, pushing herself through the bushes and thickets, heading for the roar of water. As swift as her directional change was, it only buys her a few extra seconds. The boar is on her again, making her skin itch with the adrenaline coursing in her veins.

 _There!_ A clearing up ahead, bathed in moonlight, and she pushes herself faster, desperate for a final rush of speed.

She bursts through the trees and her stomach drops out from under her. No time—her legs are already pushing her up and forward into the air, the wind blowing straight through her.

The gorge is too wide to jump. 

Over the rush of the rapids, she hears the boar skid to a stop, squealing as it does so, but there’s no relief tobe found. 

Instead, she falls into the blue.


	4. Interlude: Pull Apart the Threads

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! another quick thanks and shoutout to patheticfrog, my beta reader <3
> 
>  
> 
> early update because i'm an impatient bastard but mostly because i work the night shift today and tomorrow night, so i wanted to go ahead and post it so that i wouldn't accidentally forget about it
> 
> trigger warnings for character death/grief in dealing with said character's death
> 
> enjoy! (and maybe also get a tissue)

**Three Days Earlier**

Sometimes Scorpia wonders why she even bothers.

Now, these thoughts are rare – in fact, Scorpia can only remember two other times where she felt such dissatisfaction with her place in the Horde. All in all, though, she likes it here. Everything has its place, it’s purpose, it’s role in the plan. But there’s always been a quiet, nearly nonexistent voice in the back of her head that she can’t help but turn to on her worst days, as rare as they may be.

The voice is so soft, so comforting, filling Scorpia with an unshakeable peace that lingers in the days following such a rock-bottom day.

Today is no exception. Scorpia shakes her head. _No,_ she thinks, _today_ is _the exception._

She’s been wandering around the Fright Zone for the past couple of hours, thinking things through. Her wildcat is in serious trouble, the kind of trouble with consequences that Scorpia would rather not think about. Scorpia bites her lip at the memory of Catra’s poorly hidden panicked voice from a few hours ago: _I lost Shadow Weaver!_

Shadow Weaver. A hot curl of anger rises in Scorpia’s chest. She’d never been part of any squad that reported directly to Shadow Weaver, but the specter was more than a higher-up in the Horde – she was almost a ghost. A scary story to keep the youngest cadets in line. Some of the most feared threats often invoked Shadow Weaver’s name, and now that she’s actually met the woman, Scorpia understands why. Just being around her made everything in Scorpia want to run away, the fear curling up her spine like cold water.

Not to mention the shadows themselves. It’s no wonder Catra’s always been just a bit jumpy in the dark. Catra – beautiful, intelligent, clever Catra – never said much about her relationship with Shadow Weaver. If anything, the most Scorpia could glean from their past was by their interactions with each other.

Interactions which always ended with Scorpia gritting her teeth. She’d seen this before, in other areas of the Horde – supervisors belittling and abusing their soldiers. It never failed to make her blood boil, but she never interfered. The last time she did, she’d had to watch the abused cadet get punished.

Safe to say she wasn’t about to be the reason for more pain to befall her wildcat.

So, she thinks. Strategy’s never been her strong suit, especially when she has no one to bounce ideas off of. But Catra knows how to play the long game, and if she says Scorpia can’t mention Shadow Weaver’s escape to anyone, then Scorpia won’t.

Her feet move on autopilot, taking her from one familiar area of the Fright Zone to the next. She realizes vaguely that she’s tracing a patrol route from her early cadet days, and that she’s probably walked this path more than any other. The sounds of cadets training, the dining hall, the dormitories – all is as it should be.

When she passes a group of cadets they salute her, and she waves a claw. “Oh, you guys, you know you don’t have to do that.”

Adrien smiles and shakes their head. “It’s part of Horde Code, Force Captain, you know that.”

Gosh, she loves her squad. A pang of guilt trips her heart, and she frowns, shoulders drooping. “I should apologize to you, all of you,” she says, making eye contact with Adrien, Alyssa, Dominic, and Jace.

Dominic cocks his head to the side, slitted amber eyes widening. “For what Force Captain? You haven’t done anything wrong.” He pauses, frowning. “Maybe we have though? If we have then we’re –”

Scorpia’s hugging the four of them before they can even twitch, crushing them to her chest, smiling hard enough to make her cheeks hurt. “No way guys! None of you could ever do anything wrong.”

After another powerful squeeze, she sets them down, ignoring their groans for their smiles. She scratches the back of her head. “It’s just that I’ve been so preoccupied with Catra and Lord Hordak’s missions that I feel like I haven’t spent enough time with all of you, and I’m sorry for that. We should hang out more outside of work.”

Jace waves away her apology. “No need for that Scorpia. We know you’re busy with this promotion. We’re not upset – if anything, we’re proud of you.”

Alyssa nods enthusiastically, almost bouncing from foot to foot. “We really are! It’s amazing what you’re doing – you’re seriously such an inspiration. It’s making us train harder and smarter so that we can live up to your example.”

“Oh, you guys,” Scorpia says, blushing. She hugs them again, softer this time, and warms at the feeling of their arms around her. “I don’t deserve you.”

Adrien wiggles out of her grip. “It isn’t appropriate for you to be hugging anyone, Force Captain,” they say, standing in parade rest for a moment before softening and putting a hand on her shoulder. “But thank you for it anyway.”

She beams, pulling back, and says, “How about a spar? I could use something to distract me from some –”

A dart of movement catches her attention and her eyes flicker upward towards the vents, spotting a flash of luminous yellow eyes before they disappear.

_The Imp._

And all at once, dread settles deep into her gut. She sways with the force of it but manages to keep herself upright. Like Shadow Weaver’s shadows, the Imp is everywhere and nowhere. Always watching, observing, _listening._  

She gulps. She needs to find Wildcat.

“Force Captain?” Adrien says, concern nearly dripping from his voice. “Are you –”

She forces a laugh. “I’m fine guys,” she says, already backing away from the group. “I just remembered a meeting that I have to get to. Catra’s expecting me and –”

A knowing look flashes across all of their faces, and Dominic nods. “Go get her, Captain.”

She walks away, keeping the smile on her face until she knows they can’t see her anymore before letting the façade melt away. Her heart beats hard against her chest as she speed-walks towards Catra’s room. She tries for nonchalance but knows she’s failing horribly. She doesn’t care. Catra’s room hadn’t been secure. They hadn’t checked for shadows or listening devices or one of Entrapta’s bots or – or – 

The Imp. They never checked for Lord Hordak’s Imp, the very Imp with perfect imitative abilities and perfect recall, the Imp that was utterly soundless and scentless when it wanted to be. Lord Hordak’s eyes and ears, the one who ferreted out secrets like, like –

Scorpia shakes her head. No time for comparisons. She quickens her pace, ignoring the questioning looks she gets from some of the cadets and exits the building. Lord Hordak’s castle isn’t far away, and within minutes she’s entering the facility, wrinkling her nose at the tingling that washes over her skin. Being so close to the runestone that was once her family’s always gives her a weird sensation, but she pushes it away. She needs to find her wildcat.

Forcing herself to slow down as to not draw suspicion, she smiles at some of Emily’s bot sisters and waves at the familiar inhabitants of the castle. Only a few select, elite squadrons are allowed to live here, along with the cadets that show the most promise, and it’s no surprise when she literally runs into Lonnie.

“Oh! So sorry Lonnie, so sorry,” Scorpia says, reaching out to steady the girl.

Lonnie glares at her but immediately softens. “Hey, Scorpia. Don’t worry about it. What are you doing –”

“Catra,” Scorpia blurts, placing her claws on Lonnie’s shoulders. “Where is she? Have you seen her? We were supposed to meet and she’s late and I wanted to make sure she didn’t forget.” The lies slip easily from her lips.

Lonnie’s eyebrows rise alarmingly high. “Last I heard she was summoned to Lord Hordak’s lab. What’s wrong? Is there a mission that –”

Scorpia sucks in a breath, already moving, unable to school her face into anything other than worry. “No no, I just need to speak to her, thanks Lonnie!” she calls over her shoulder.

Her pulse beats loud in her ears, saying _Catra. Catra. CatraCatraCatraCatra–_ until it’s all she can hear. She takes to the side halls, following the shortcuts that her wildcat had shown her once when neither of them could sleep and needed a way to burn off some energy that didn’t involve sparring.

It’s here, in these dimly lit and narrow hallways that Scorpia slides to a stop. She crouches behind a rusting pillar, forcing her breaths to slow, and stills. The pillar is bulky enough to hide her and rusted enough to be weak, and within a moment she’s scraped out a small hole to see through, the slight _skrch_ of her claw on metal drowned out by the castle’s ambient hum caused by all of the whirring machinery.

What she sees makes her forget how to breathe.

Catra likes her personal space and doesn’t take kindly whenever Scorpia invades it, but Scorpia continues to anyway because there’s a flicker in her gorgeous eyes that makes it seem like she appreciates the hugs on some level. That doesn’t mean Catra doesn’t squirm and wiggle and occasionally claw at her to get away, her fur fluffing up a little bit and her tail lashing just this side of lazily as if to tell Scorpia she hasn’t gone too far.

Even dozing, Catra moves. Twitches. Snuffles. 

Scorpia’s never seen her so _still._

An unfamiliar human has Catra slung haphazardly over his shoulder, and recklessly deposits the magicat into the waiting arms of one of Entrapta’s bots. Scorpia winces at the sound Catra’s head makes when it hits the bot’s body.

Catra doesn’t so much as twitch. 

The man touches her, sliding his hands over her neck and wrists, and Scorpia feels the snarl bubbling up her throat, caught behind unmoving lips – _“Don’t touch her!”_

Despite the rage bubbling up inside of her, she can’t move.

The Imp lands on the human’s shoulder.

The man nods. “She’s dead.”

Scorpia’s mind goes fuzzy, and within seconds she’s watching herself from the other side of the hallway. Distantly, she watches the Imp, the man, and the bot walk towards her, and she waits to be caught. To be punished. To be reprimanded and scolded and –

But they don’t spot her. Not a glance, not a twitch, nothing.

She’s relieved, in a vague sort of way, but her eyes never leave Catra’s –

No. She can’t think that. Catra’s not – she can’t be –

She needs to move. Needs to follow them and make _sure_ because there can’t be any doubt in this. This has to be utterly and completely certain. From the other side of the hallway, she tells herself to move but her body refuses to do anything other than stand there and watch as the trio turns a corner and disappears into the labyrinthine halls of Lord Hodak’s castle. 

Time loses meaning. She’s not sure how long she stands there, numb, before a persistent beeping shatters the quiet air. Scorpia watches herself tap her Force Captain badge, turning the alarm off. It’s time for bed. Time to put reports down and attempt some shut-eye.

She walks, stiff-kneed and blank-eyed, in the direction of Catra’s room. It’s not far, and when she blinks she’s standing in front of the nondescript black door, punching in the passcode she knows better than her own. The door opens with a slight _swish_ and Scorpia steps in. The door closes behind her as she stares, seeing the rumpled bed, the messy desk, the pile of scrapped plans in the corner, and doesn’t register any of it.

The room is chilly, uncomfortably so, and Scorpia makes a move for the thermostat because _Wildcat hates the cold and won’t sleep well and –_

All at once Scorpia’s back in her body, choking on her breath. _Catra’s cold right now so cold even though she_ hates _the cold and –_

And there’s nothing Scorpia can do to warm her up.

Her knees give out from under her and she slides down the door, tears already falling. It takes her a minute to realize the high-pitched keen is coming from her and when she does she hugs her knees to her chest and sobs into them. Her throat aches from the force but she doesn’t care. Let someone hear her crying and confront her and lecture her on uncalled for displays of emotion – let them come. She almost wants someone to, if only for the distraction it would bring.

Scorpia presses her claws to her chest as if putting enough pressure on her heart will stop the bleeding, but it doesn’t help. If anything it somehow makes it worse, and she can vividly remember the feel of bundling Catra up in that blue blanket and hugging her to her chest, Catra warm and squirming in her arms, an utter spitfire, so lively and vibrant and –

“Stop,” she says through the massive lump in her throat. She can’t. Not yet. The wound is too fresh, still hemorrhaging, still deciding whether or not this is going to break her in a way she can’t fix. 

Through her tears, she looks at the bed again, sees the blue blanket, and stands on unsteady legs. She trips over something and collapses, half on the bed half not, and is engulfed by Catra’s scent, all warm and soft, and keens again. Between her stuttering breaths and the headache forming it’s harder to get onto the bed than it should be, but once on it she buries her face in Catra’s pillow and hugs the blue blanket to her.

Then, and only then, does she allow the grief to overtake her, allow it to crest over all of her senses until the only thing she can focus on is the gaping hole where her heart should be.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

She can’t tell if she slept or not.

At some point during the night, she’d cried herself out, let the tears soak into Catra’s pillow until there was nothing more to give. There’s a heaviness to her limbs that’s new and a hollowness that she thinks might be permanent. Either she’s so numb she can’t feel the pain or she’s in so much pain she’s numb, but whatever the feeling is it’s made a home in her chest.

An alarm sounds and its instinct alone that makes her arm move to turn it off, but it’s enough to rouse her a bit. She’ll need to get up, run through drills with the cadets, figure out the next plan of attack.

Scorpia sniffs and wipes her eyes, sucking in a shaky, tremulous breath. Everything in her is unsure – should she cry or not? Move or not? Feel or not?

Surely she deserves a break from her duties to mourn. Surely the Horde is not yet so heartless as to deprive her of some sort of mourning period.

She’ll need to get things ready for a memorial. She can’t remember the last time the Horde ever did a memorial but Catra more than anyone deserves one for being an exceptional soldier, an excellent tactician, and – and –

 _And she’s my friend,_ Scorpia thinks, curling into herself. _She’s my best friend and my wildcat and for that alone she deserves the world._

A dry sob shakes her. She doesn’t know Catra’s favorite color, or her favorite flower, or what kind of burial service she’d want, or who to invite, or –

Dread sweeps through her, cold and disconcerting. She’ll need to tell Entrapta. And Lonnie. And Rogelio and Kyle and –

Adora.

She’ll need to get word to Adora.

Because for all of their fights and betrayals, Scorpia _knows_ Catra cares deeply for the soldier-turned-Princess. It would be impossible for Catra not to – they were childhood best friends, always together, always at each other’s sides. Despite her wildcat’s snarky veneer, Scorpia knows Adora’s abandonment broke something in her. She never got the whole story, not really, but what she lacks in strategic skills she makes up for in emotional ones.

And Catra always got so terribly quiet after an encounter with Adora.

Scorpia’s eyes fly open and she sits up so quickly black spots appear in her vision. She left Catra. She didn’t follow the bot, didn’t get the location of where she could find Catra.

She _abandoned_ her.

She’s out the door before she realizes she’s moved, Catra’s blue blanket still clutched in her claws. Ignoring the stares from fellow soldiers, she nearly runs to Entrapta’s lab, not bothering to knock before barging in.

“Entrapa!” she yells, taking in the dimly lit room.

“Scorpia! You’re just in time to witness my newest project. I’ve been wanting to give Emily speech capabilities for quite awhile and –”

“No time,” Scorpia says, feeling a small stab of guilt at interrupting. Entrapta doesn’t seem to mind, though. Surrounded by scrap metal, she waves Scorpia over to her, half paying attention.

“Do we have a mission? I’ve got some bots that could –”

Scorpia shakes her head. “No, no, I’m sure your bots are great but this is something different, something –”

 _You can’t tell Entrapta anything._ Catra’s voice in her head like a soothing whisper, and she can almost feel the magicat’s breath on her ear. _She’s terrible at keeping secrets. Once she knows, Lord Hordak knows._

Scorpia isn’t about to start doubting her wildcat, not here, not now.

“I came for a favor, actually,” she says, putting on a somewhat bashful smile and scratching the back of her head. “I’m trying to find Catra so I can have her sign a couple of reports. Normally I’d go looking for her but –”

Entrapta interrupts with a high-pitched _oohhhhh!_ “You’ll have to forge her signature,” the scientist says, turning away from Scopria and reaching for some wires. “Lord Hordak told me that he sent her on an undercover mission last night. Even he doesn’t know when she’ll be back.”

Scorpia blinks. “Oh, well, that sucks,” she says, a tingling sort of numbness overtaking her. There’s a ringing in her ears that’s threatening to drown everything out. There are dots she knows she should connect but she doesn’t want to.

“Yeah, but at least that means I’ll have more time to work on Emily and figure out some other uses for the First One’s tech. I’ve been thinking about a way to harness She-Ra when she goes all red-eyed and veiny like she did when we were up north. Surely something in the coding could –”

Scorpia doesn’t bother saying goodbye. Instead, she slips quietly out of the lab and begins walking, letting her feet take her wherever they may.

After all, Entrapta can’t keep a secret and Lord Hordak won’t be left in the dark.

Her computer skills aren’t anything to write commendations for, but even with her claws she can get around on one fairly easily. Maybe if she uses Catra’s datapad –

She shakes her head. No. Catra’s d– _not awake_ , at the moment, and using her profile for anything would raise some sort of alarm somewhere.

“Hey Scorpia,” Lonnie says, sidling up beside her.

Scorpia glances down and whatever’s on her face makes Lonnie pale a bit, the grin disappearing in an instant. “What’s happened?”

So much. “Not here,” Scorpia says, already changing course, heading for one of the maintenance ladders that lead to one of the many balconies scattered across the building. Lonnie follows, the set of her shoulders stiff but her face blank. 

They ascend quickly and quietly, and once on the balcony, Scorpia closes the heavy iron door. Her eyes peer into the dark ledges and corners. They’re as alone as they can be.

“Alright,” Lonnie says, hands on her hips, stance strong and defiant. “What’s this all about Scorpia?”

Scorpia shudders and holds out the blanket, knowing Lonnie won’t understand but willing her to anyway. 

“Catra,” Lonnie says after a moment. “Something’s up with Catra. Is this about her wanting us to keep a lookout for anything suspicious? Because Kyle actually did _well_ during our spar last night and if that’s not suspicious I don’t know what is.” 

Scorpia shakes her head. Pulls the blanket back close to her. “Do you have your datapad on you?” Lonnie nods and holds it out, but Scorpia shakes her head again. “I need you to look up some security footage for me,” she says. “Side hallway F5 at approximately eight last night.”

Lonnie shoots her a look, brows furrowed, but does as she says, her fingers flitting across the screen faster than Scorpia ever could with her own claws. Within minutes Lonnie’s got the footage pulled up.

It’s grainy – no one really uses the side hallways, and when they do it’s for things better left unsaid. Trysts, dealings, off the book meetings – all things fit for the side hallways.

Even things like disposing of a body.

Scorpia squints, taking in the image of the man, the Imp, and the bot. Catra’s in the bot’s arms, in full view of the camera, and Scorpia can just make out the tip of her stinger from where she’d hid behind the pillar. There’s no sound, and the footage skips around a little bit, but as the trio moves closer to the camera Scorpia’s nose nearly touches the screen in her effort to absorb all the details.

There’s not a single bruise on Catra. Her fur is fluffed, her hair ruffled, her clothing rumpled – all signs of a spar, maybe, but not a full fledged fight. No awkwardly angled bones, no blood, no haphazard bandages. If anything, Catra looks asleep. Nowhere near peaceful, but asleep nonetheless. 

The trio moves out of frame and Lonnie shuts the datapad off. As the screen goes to black so does Scorpia’s brain.

There was no evidence of a fight.

 _Wildcat never stood a chance,_ she thinks, vaguely aware of the trembles running through her body. _There was no honor in this, no fairness. Just a stab in the back._

Scorpia swallows around the white-hot poker in her throat, eyes stinging, chest clenching. _I thought the Horde was supposed to be merciful, supposed to bring peace and order. But this? This isn’t – it isn’t – it’s not –_

“Scorpia?”

Lonnie’s voice shakes Scorpia to her core. Lonnie – sure, confident, unshakeable Lonnie – has never once, in the time Scorpia has known her, spoken with a tremble in her voice. But she does now.

Lonnie’s eyes are wide. “We didn’t see what I think we just saw, did we?”

Scorpia thanks and curses the moons for Lonnie’s quick mind. “I think,” Scorpia says, glancing around again, “that Catra isn’t on a mission.”

Lonnie scoffs, but it’s weak. “Why would she be on a mission? We received a communication from Lord Hordak himself stating that Catra would be spending the next two weeks with him so that he could teach her,” Lonnie shrugs, making an upwards gesture with one of her hands, “Horde Force Captain things.”

Scorpia almost laughs. She can’t keep her voice steady. “Lord Hordak doesn’t spend quality time with the troops, no matter how good they are. It’s covered in Force Captain Orientation.” Then she frowns. “Entrapta told me that Lord Hordak told her that Catra was going on a secret mission for an undetermined length of time.”

Lonnie frowns hard, one hand white-knuckling the datapad and the other rubbing at her temple. “Why would Lord Hordak lie?”

“And why would he lie so badly?” Scorpia asks. 

No one answers their questions. It’s a relatively still morning in the Fright Zone, the sun only just starting to rise, leaving the area around them wreathed in pale red light.

“Is Catra dead?” Lonnie asks, voice barely above a whisper.

Scorpia stiffens, remembers her unmoving chest, her limp yet stiff body, the way her head slammed into the metal bot and there wasn’t so much as an instinctive flinch to signal life. “Yes,” she chokes out, the tears still not falling, her body still too empty to give anything more. “Yes, Catra is dead.”

Once, long ago, Scorpia had been told of her birthright. Of her people, who willingly leant their runestone and power to the Horde so that Lord Hordak could bring everlasting peace to Etheria. Scorpia doesn’t remember much from the golden days of the Rebellion – she was nothing more than a child, after all, too preoccupied with learning how to control her budding strength to be bothered with anything beyond the walls of the Fright Zone.

But maybe her people hadn’t been as generous as she’d been told. Maybe she was told those stories so that she wouldn’t rebel, wouldn’t let the memory of her people down, her people who _fought and died for the Horde against the Princesses._

Scorpia doesn’t want to connect the dots. But she will for her wildcat.

 _Lord Hordak murdered Catra,_ she thinks. A cold, heavy stone forms in the pit of her stomach and settles there, sinking deep into her muscles.

“Lonnie,” she says, because maybe if she gives voice to it it’ll hurt less. She pauses, though, and looks at Lonnie, holding the girl’s gaze. Asking silently if she can continue, if she can say the words that’ll shatter everything they’ve built their lives on.

Asking if she can trust the girl who stands next to her, the girl who never particularly liked or respected or even _trusted_ Catra, but who still stood by her in every battle and still followed her commands. 

There’s a steely determination in Lonnie’s eyes and a blush high on her cheeks. Her shoulders are thrown back and she’s standing taller than Scorpia’s ever seen her before, standing like a soldier about to go into a battle they know they won’t win.

Scorpia’s heart aches to be the one to say it, but what’s a little more ache in the grand scheme of things? 

“I think,” she says, hesitating, but continuing at Lonnie’s nod. “I think the Horde isn’t as good as we think it is. I think Lord Hordak murdered Catra. And I think –” She bites her lip. “I think –”

“I think Adora was right,” Lonnie says, her voice barely above a whisper.

Something in Scorpia relaxes as it breaks. “I think Adora was right,” she says. 

Below them, the Horde begins to fully awaken. Breakfast is being eaten, drills are begun, schedules are being handed out. There are plans to make and halls to clean and orders to fill. No one notices the rebellious, treasonous words being spoken high above them.

Lonnie and Scorpia watch the sunrise together, watch as the light stretches over the ruined plains and is interrupted by the high wall surrounding the Fright Zone.

Scorpia frowns.

 _No more darkness,_ she thinks. _No more._

She takes the blanket in her hands and wraps it around her neck. The tight knot rests at her collarbone, and a gust of wind makes the blanket flare out behind her like a cape. It almost feels like a hug.

Lonnie puts her hand on Scorpia’s arm and squeezes.

Scorpia can almost feel her wildcat beside her, tail swinging lazily back and forth as she perches on the railing, a challenging smirk playing on her lips. 

 _So,_ the phantom says, _what are you going to do about this Scorpia?_

What indeed.

 


	5. we build these bridges to tear them down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y’all! as ever, give it up for my beta reader patheticfrog who catches most if not all of those pesky spelling errors. 
> 
> no extra trigger warnings for this chapter
> 
> enjoy!

 

For one breathtaking moment, Catra is suspended between flight and fall. Her stomach has yet to drop, the vertigo has yet to set in, and the moment is peaceful. This is the moment she’d sprout wings, if she could, and fly away from everything – the Horde, this place, Adora – everything.

She sees blue, blue, blue, and wonders if this is what freedom feels like.

Then, all at once, she’s falling.

She screams, fear ripping through her, and lashes out, desperate for some sort of handhold on the steep, rocky walls surrounding her. The water hits her fast, cold enough that it takes every ounce of her self control not to inhale at the shock of it. The current grabs her, shoving her along it’s path, and she breaches the surface with a ragged gasp, half choking as a wave hits her in the face.

Treading water, she takes a moment to orient herself before lifting her legs until she’s floating on her back. She coughs, hacking up water as best as she can while staying afloat, gaze flitting from one rock wall to the other. The current tugs harshly on her fur and the unwanted comparison of the current to Shadow Weaver’s shadows raises it’s ugly head. She shakes it off and keeps looking, water lapping at her chin, but there’s nothing to grab on to, nothing to stop her from going over the waterfall and –

Her head whips around, catching movement in her peripheral vision.

The watcher waves at her, a spear in one hand, and she almost grins.

“You can toss a rope down anytime!” she yells, garbled and weak, the roar of the water overtaking everything. It drills into her eardrums until her blood flows in rhythm with it, until she thinks maybe she’s being absorbed by the river itself.

Her body moves of it’s own volition, flipping around so she’s on her stomach. Her eyes widen at the proximity of the waterfall, the frothing blue water sinking into black, and within moments she’s paddling as hard as she can, desperate to delay the inevitable. She takes a deep breath, sucking in air until she thinks she might burst, and screws her mouth shut, teeth clenching hard.

She falls again, ungraceful and ungainly, the water beating hard against her body. The scream she lets out is all gut, all painful and panicked, and she twists midair, righting herself to land on her feet.

Catra closes her eyes, curls up into a ball, and waits for her body to hit the water. She slams into it, the force strong enough to knock some of the air from her lungs. The current sucks her down but she kicks hard against it, limbs slamming into rocks. She angles up and forward, fighting against the current of the plunge pool, her open eyes stinging.

Eventually, an eternity later, she surfaces, gasping, choking, limbs flailing, all semblance of calm evaporating in the face of not being able to breathe again.

The moment her feet hit the bank of the river she’s clawing her way from the water, chest tight, her panic a noose around her throat.

_Breathe, you idiot, breathe!_ she thinks, scrambling up the bank, digging her claws deep into the sediment.

She coughs up water and gags before collapsing onto her side, half in the water and half out, her muscles too jellified to hold her up. Her body fights her for a few moments longer, convinced she’s still underwater. Finally, though, her lungs and ribcage move in tandem and she breathes.

_Oh, thank the Horde,_ she thinks, closing her eyes, comforting herself in the rhythm of her lungs and ignoring the dizziness.

She doesn’t know how long she lies there, but it’s long enough for the cold to seep into her marrow, long enough for her body to protest any sort of movement, the bruises from her swim making themselves known.

Catra grits her teeth. Opens her eyes. Even her ear muscles hurt but still she swivels them, listening. No birds, no boars, no bears – just the water and her ragged breathing.

“Okay,” she whispers, slowly rolling herself onto her stomach. She groans, pain ratcheting up her body, lighting her up like a live-wire. Slowly, grudgingly, she digs her palms into the muddy, gritty bank and pushes up, muscles straining. Once fully extended, she locks her elbows and shoulders, unable to help the pained hiss that escapes through her bared teeth. Then she pulls her knees up, ignoring the way they scrape against the fine gravel, until she’s on her hands and knees.

Black spots cloud her vision. Everything in her is begging her to lie down and quit, but she doesn’t know how to. She was only ever taught to keep going, keep attacking, keep moving until her opponents stopped her or until her body forcibly shut her down. So she keeps going.

Her breaths come in short, sharp gasps. She rests for a moment, putting more of her weight on her knees than her hands, and tries to stop the trembles racking her body. If she wanted to, she could lie here until everything faded away, could give up and let whatever come, come.

Her lips turn up in a snarl.

“Come on,” she says, less than a whisper, less than a breath. With a low groan that scrapes her throat raw, she hauls herself to her feet and stands, her legs weaker than they’ve ever been. Black spots appear in her vision again and she stumbles, her tail whipping out behind her in a last ditch effort to keep herself standing.

She succeeds. Barely.

She takes some time – seconds, minutes, she isn’t sure – to take stock of her surroundings. Trees, water, undergrowth. She wants to shake her head to clear it but can’t muster up the energy. Her first step is tentative, but if she stays still for too much longer the cold will become less of an inconvenience and more of a life-threatening problem.

_Keep moving_ , she thinks, aimlessly choosing to follow the river. She won’t get lost. More lost than she already is, at least.

Another step. Her right knee nearly gives out from under her and she wobbles, barely mustering up the energy to throw her arms out to balance her. The instinctive lash of her tail is the only thing that saves her from, once again, ending up in the mud.

She walks. Does her best to keep her eyes open. Doesn’t bother to do any thinking, any checks for predators or watchers. Too much fuzz, too much exhaustion. Whatever happens, happens.

She thinks, vaguely, about Scorpia. A hug wouldn’t be the worst thing at the moment. At least she wouldn’t be alone. At least she’d have someone to lean on. Knowing Scorpia, the girl wouldn’t even let her walk – she’d pick up Catra and carry her, ignoring her protests, a constant litany of praise spouting from her lips.

Belatedly, she realizes her eyes are stinging, filling with tears, but it’s all she can do to put one foot in front of the other. The tears fall without a hinderance, and shame bubbles up in her aching chest, hot and sharp.

_Force Captain,_ she reminds herself. Even her thoughts are stuttered and gasping. _Act like it. Tougher. Stronger. Smarter. No tears._

She wants her blanket. Wants to be home. Wants to be curled up and warm. Wants to not be hurting. Wants, wants, _wants_.

Eventually she can’t muster up the energy to want. Movement is rote, habitual. If she stops she’ll fall over, and she can’t fall over, not yet.

Time passes. The sky lightens. Birds begin calling to one another. The sun reaches out and Catra shivers with it. Bit by bit, she forces herself back into herself. Takes stock again. No broken bones, but myriads of cuts and bruises. Possible internal damage too, but she’s not dead, not yet, and that’s got to count for something.

Abruptly, the ground beneath her feet changes. She opens her eyes. A decently sized clearing of grass on the riverbank, sun-touched and warming. She takes a step. Another. Another. Walks until she’s standing in front of some sort of plant – a tree, maybe, but a small one, with boughs branching out a few feet from the ground but then curling inward a bit. The leaves provide some shade but they still allow plenty of sunlight through.

She’s on her knees before she registers the movement, crawling stiffly under the bush-tree- _thing_ , and collapses with a sigh. Curling up on herself requires more energy than she can give. She tucks her arms under her head as a pillow and succumbs to sleep.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

Catra notices the voices first. They aren’t close, but their proximity is worrisome. She wants to snap awake, wants to hiss and show them her claws, but there’s no energy. Her limbs are dead weight. Her ribs ache. She wants to go back to sleep and pretend she’s back in the Horde after a particularly nasty training exercise.

“We need to help her,” a voice hisses. “She could be dying, and if she is who we think she is –”

“No,” the other voice says, low and sharp. “She’s breathing. She’ll be fine. You heard Sati’s orders: no interference. Your stunt with the boar –”

“She would have _died_.”

A pause. “I’m not saying you didn’t do the right thing, I’m saying that –”

“Yeah, I know. Orders.” The voice huffs. “You didn’t see her though. I wasn’t about to let her die, not on my watch. Especially if –”

The second voice hisses in warning. “ _Don’t_ say it. She wears their emblem still. We cannot trust her.”

Another pause, longer this time, long enough that Catra drifts closer to sleep than wakefulness. “The Horde isn’t coming back, Lyra. Not this time.”

Catra sleeps.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

The next time she wakes, she does so quickly and painfully. Before she opens her eyes she’s groaning, gently stretching her abused muscles in an attempt to get rid of some stiffness.

Catra blinks at the harsh sunlight. It must be nearing afternoon. As she waits for her sight to adjust she swivels her ears, taking stock. No bears, no boars – just birds and the river and the wind in the trees.

She sniffs, expecting the same, but stiffens at two new scents. Her eyes widen then narrow, and she peers through her leafy curtain. There were two voices, two people, close to her at some point when she was _too injured to protect herself._

Anger rises up in her chest and her heart beats hard against her aching ribs. They could have killed her. Could have captured her. Could have done _anything_ to her while she was utterly defenseless. Her fur fluffs up and her breath comes in short, painful gasps. Her claws knead the dirt, her tail lashing against the ground.

This place isn’t safe. She isn’t safe. She needs to make a proper, defensible campsite _now_ , before whoever it was that spoke over her comes back and does more permanent things.

She sniffs again, trying to memorize the scents. Her nose twitches. She doesn’t recognize one of them, full of lighter, more floral notes as it is, but the second scent rings a bell – the watcher. The two scents mingle with one another, but neither breach the flimsy bush wall and a small part of her relaxes.

Pushing her immediate suspicion down, she tries to think impartially. The watcher doesn’t mean her any harm. No _immediate_ harm, at least. There’ve been plenty of times that the watcher could have killed her or let the forest itself kill her, but they didn’t. Catra huffs. She has to give her watcher credit for distracting the boar. She doesn’t think she would have, if their positions had been reversed.

The bit of conversation she’d overheard gives her more questions than answers, but the watcher defended her from the second voice.

_Maybe_ , she thinks, _I have an ally out here after all._

She sniffs again, just to be sure, and catches whiffs of cooked meat. Her eyes flit across the clearing until – _there_. There’s a package of some sort tied to the branches of a tree a few arm-lengths away. It’s high enough so that no animals can get to it, but low enough that, as long as she can stretch, she shouldn’t have any trouble getting to it.

_I might actually have to thank them now,_ Catra thinks grudgingly, _if I ever meet them._

Movement is slow and painful. Every muscle protests at every twitch, and when Catra undoes a bit of her bodysuit to check the bruise on her ribcage she grimaces. Even through her fur she can see the dark blues and purples of the bruise from when she fallen from the dead tree. The cuts, shallow as they are, are already beginning to scab over, the dried blood tugging at her fur.

Sitting up, she rests her back against the trunk of the bush. She has to hunch a bit so that her hair doesn’t become hopelessly entangled in the boughs surrounding her, and it’s a tight fit, but it feels safe too, so she lets her discomfort be.

Her fur is dirty, almost unbearably so – dried mud and blood caked in, twigs and leaves tangled up in her fur and hair, and other bits of debris clinging to her clothes. She makes a face. She’ll have to get into the water again to clean it all off.

_All I’m asking is to stay clean for one full day. Just one,_ she thinks, inspecting the ugly bruise on her right knee. She’d slammed it into a rock at some point and the skin is tender, shockingly so. It may not be able to hold her weight, and even if it does, she knows she shouldn’t walk on it. Rogelio had almost ruined his knee in an accident once but hadn’t wanted to rest. He’d walked on it so much before it got better that it became permanently weaker than his other knee. Not enough to hinder him daily, but enough that it affected his fighting skills. Catra shakes her head, resigning herself to taking it easy.

Bit difficult, taking it easy when you’re having to survive in someplace you’ve never been before, with giant boars ready to eat you and probably dangerous watchers.

Not exactly relaxing.

There are other bruises, other scrapes. Shallow cuts on her cheeks, on her legs, on her forearms and palms. The only two serious injuries are on her knee and ribcage, though, and she doesn’t feel any sense of impending doom regarding her insides.

“Well,” she says, tongue dry and voice scratchy. “I lived.”

She sighs. Crawls out from under the safety of the bush and feels the fur on her back fluff up in a way that’s quickly becoming familiar. She feels the eyes rake over her, cataloguing every flinch, but ignores them. Her watcher won’t attack her. Probably. She’ll keep a lookout for them, track them as they track her, but she allows herself to be a bit lenient.

She scoots over towards the tree where the package hangs, using her shoulders and palms to move herself. Grits her teeth in pain and flicks her ears when her arms won’t go as far back as she knows they should. Then she digs her claws into the thankfully alive tree, using her left leg to lift herself up.

_Whoa there, Wildcat_. Scorpia’s voice is in her ear, unbidden, as she sways, blinking away black spots. _Take it easy._

“Easier said than done,” she whispers, gently placing her right foot on the ground and shifting her weight.

It’s shaky, pain racing up her thigh, but her knee holds as long as she keeps her weight on her toes. She limps towards another tree and ducks behind it to pee, then hobbles towards the river. It’s wide and shallow, the current slow and ambling. Carefully lowering herself down, she sits next to the river’s edge and drinks until her stomach sloshes uncomfortably. Then she removes her clothing and scoots into the river until the water washes over her knees. It’s cold, but with the sunlight beating down on her it’s bearable. Her injured knee tingles from the coolness, and she breathes out a sigh of relief.

She takes her time grooming. She won’t be going anywhere today, or tomorrow if her knee is any indication, so she may as well. It’s calming. Lets her mind wander in a peacefully fuzzy sort of way.

By the growling in her stomach and the colors of her bruises, she think she may’ve slept the day, the night, and most of the morning away. During that time at least two different people watched over her – her watcher and a mystery person.

Their conversation plays back in her mind, suffused with a dreamlike quality. Part of her thinks she made it up, but their scents cover the area immediately outside of her ramshackle shelter. Though her watcher remained unnamed, she at least has a name of the other voice – Lyra. The one who hadn’t wanted to help her, and who had advised her watcher to stop helping her.

_They’re on Sati’s orders,_ she thinks, scrubbing lightly at her ribs. _Sati must be their leader. Lyra sounds like a Force Captain, so maybe Lyra is the one my watcher reports to._ She licks at the spot on her right wrist. How can she influence her watcher so that Lyra doesn’t turn them against her? How can she keep whatever flimsy loyalty her watcher has for her?

Catra blinks, sucking in a sharp breath. They’d both said something about her being someone. Whoever they think she is, she’s important enough that they want to keep a watch on her and see what she does. Waiting to see where her loyalties are.

She takes off her mask and looks at it. Her watcher and Lyra had recognized her as someone of the Horde, seen her uniform and her mask, and Lyra had deemed her untrustworthy for it.

Relief wells up in her chest, spilling up into her throat, and she keens, just a little. This is it. Her mission. It has to be. She needs to make contact with these people and convince them to join the Horde and to swear allegiance to Lord Hordak.

Finally, she knows her mission.

She squeezes the mask, tight enough for it to dig into her palms, and takes a deep, calming breath. For the most part she’s unsurprised it survived a plunge down a waterfall. It’s been through worse. It’s scratched and banged up but still holding well, and she carefully cleans the mud off of it.

Adora had given it to her so long ago it feels like she’s had it for forever. A gift in celebration of the first time she’d beaten Octavia in a sparring session – months before Adora did. Adora’d made it herself out of scrap metal she’d found around the Fright Zone, welded haphazardly together and presented with a flourish.

_“To keep your bangs back,”_ Adora had said, _“but also to make you more intimidating. It’s a good way to throw off opponents.”_

Catra hugs the mask to her chest and sighs. Things were so much simpler back then. But maybe they weren’t. Maybe they only seemed simpler because neither of them wanted to give any deep thought to the Horde and their place in the world. They had their orders and they followed them, no questions asked. Maybe some complaining, but the job would get done and get done well.

They were good soldiers. Now, though? Catra isn’t sure. She’s here because she not only disobeyed Lord Hordak, but lied to his face. Good soldiers obey. Good soldiers tell the truth. Good soldiers do what’s expected of them.

She should be more like Scorpia. Despite her naiveté and kindness, she knows how to follow and carry out orders, knows how to work with people, knows how to be a soldier.

“I didn’t even know there was a Force Captain Orientation,” Catra mutters, placing the mask back on her head.

Not that Shadow Weaver ever bothered to tell her about it. Her ears flatten and she hisses, snarling into the water. _Shadow Weaver._

_Stupid, stupid, stupid,_ she thinks, scrubbing her hair harder than necessary. How could she have actually thought for one moment Shadow Weaver cared about her? How could she have been so stupid? So completely naïve? _And all it took was a few words,_ she thinks. A few words for Shadow Weaver to pull her apart and use her as if she were nothing more than a pawn.

Shadow Weaver’s voice sounds in her ears: _You were only ever a pawn, you foolish animal._

“Stop it!” she yells, pressing her palms into her temples hard enough to hurt. Catra grinds her teeth together. Never again. She’ll never be used again. She’s not a pawn, she’s not a pawn, _I’m not a pawn._

Shoving all thoughts of Shadow Weaver away is harder than it should be and leaves her somewhat dizzy. She takes another deep breath, forcing her muscles to relax. There’s no need to panic. Not anymore. She knows her mission, and now that she does, she can come up with a plan to complete it. Once she gets back to the Horde and has once again proven herself, she’ll personally lead the hunt to find Shadow Weaver and give the old witch a taste of her own medicine.

She finishes cleaning herself and scoots back towards the shore, grabbing at a large stick to haul herself up out of the water. She leaves her clothes on the bank to dry. Walking around naked isn’t ideal, especially when she’s being watched, but she can’t say she’s not used to it. The Horde never was one for privacy, with communal showers and dormitories, after all. Something about how privacy perpetuated an idea of difference when it was stronger to be part of the whole.

She’d never understood it, not really. She’d always stood out for her ears and her tail. Scorpia for the same, Rogelio for the same. Each of them demeaned in some way for their animalistic characteristics, each one of them standing out despite not wanting to.

Water drips from her fur as she hobbles towards the hanging package. Standing on the tips of her toes, she reaches up, ignores the protest of her muscles, and cuts the rope with a quick swipe. Her stomach grumbles at the smell coming from it, and she sits down with her back resting on the tree’s trunk to inspect it.

It’s not much. The cloth is rough and tan, and the rope used to secure it is tough, so she sets it aside just in case. There’s not much in it – just a few strips of meat. She sniffs. It smells like the rabbit she’d caught however long ago, but dried. She shrugs and eats. If it’s poisoned then, well. At least her knee won’t hurt anymore. Or, it will, but there’ll be something far more pressing to deal with.

Catra only eats half of it, and sets the remainder down beside her so that she’ll remember to retie it once evening sets in. Instead of coming up with a plan for the next day, however, she finds herself yawning and nodding off, warm and content in the sunlight. Grumbling, she drags herself upright. Movements sluggish, she reties the parcel of meat and grabs an armful of the long grasses dotting the clearing. She shoves them under the bush-plant-thing and only just remembers to grab her clothes. They’re not dry but they’ll do well enough – the sun is still shining brightly on her new shelter, so she’ll probably dry out fully as she sleeps.

She crawls under the bush’s limbs, arranges the grass haphazardly in the shallow divot where she collapsed, and falls asleep with her right leg half sticking out of her shelter, the rest of her curled tightly into herself.

Or, she almost does. She’s about to drift off when she hears movement to her left, and it takes every ounce of her willpower to feign sleep. She sniffs as surreptitiously as she can, opening her mouth a fraction to really get a handle on the scent.

It’s her watcher.

They settle outside her shelter. Close enough that if she opens her eyes she’d finally be able to see them in startling detail, but not close enough to be within swiping distance.

“Rest well, little one,” her watcher says, barely audible. “I’ll keep watch.”

She forces her fur to lie flat. A show of trust. That’s what she needs. If she can get her watcher to trust her, it’ll be that much easier to sway them to the Horde.

Catra dozes for awhile, getting used to the feeling of the watcher near her, of the pattern of their breathing and the sound of them idly picking grass.

She should be patient. She knows she should be. But she can’t let them have the upper hand, not now, not when she’s injured.

Besides. Trust. What better way to get the watcher to trust her than to be physically vulnerable around them? To be perceived as weak?

Catra opens her eyes, unable to help the smirk that slips onto her face.

“Hey, watcher.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can we PLEASE TALK ABOUT THAT SEASON 3 TRAILER? ABOUT CATRA IN THAT JACKET? NOELLE UR KILLING ME KDFHKSDFK 
> 
> i am VERY excited to see whats up for season 3 and more than a little relieved to see that Catra is okay - relatively speaking. like i said at the v beginning of this fic, it’s canon up to season 2, but knowing me i’ll probs introduce the characters from season 3 at some point
> 
> thanks for reading!


	6. minnows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! obligatory shoutout to patheticfrog for beta-ing and cheering me on
> 
> also UPDATE SCHEDULE: my job's finally started getting predictable so i'll probs be uploading sundays or mondays, depending
> 
> no special warnings in this chap
> 
> enjoy!

Her watcher stills, ears swiveling towards Catra, but otherwise doesn’t move.

Catra takes a moment, soaking in the sight, her mind whirling to a screeching stop. She feels her eyes go wide, her fur fluffing, and can’t help but shrink back into her makeshift den a bit. The shock leaves her lightheaded and she digs her claws into the ground to anchor her.

Her watcher turns – slowly, hesitantly. Their eyes are greener than anything Catra has ever seen.

“Hi,” her watcher says, voice smooth and calm, like water rolling over round stones.

Catra’s ears twitch. There’s a witty remark somewhere on her tongue but it can’t be bothered to make an appearance. “I didn’t know there were others like me,” she whispers, tongue dry.

Something like grief flashes across their face, but it’s deeper than any Catra has ever seen before. “No,” they say, “I suppose you wouldn’t.”

Catra rakes her eyes over the magicat, unable to look away. Blue-grey fur crisscrossed with darker gray stripes, so much more than her own. Black hair pulled up into a ponytail, it’s coloration grayer at the roots and spilling onto the magicat’s face, encircling an eye and part of their nose. Specks of white dappling their hands – hands kept within full view but tense, as if they want to clench them but won’t. There’s another patch of white beginning at the hollow of their throat that disappears beneath weathered leather armor.

Catra narrows her eyes. She needs to pull herself together. Great, there’s at least one other magicat, _whatever –_ she still has a mission to complete. “So,” she says, playing for nonchalance, letting her tail flick lazily. “Who are you?”

Again, some broken expression flicks across their face before they can hide it. “I’m Kahi,” they say, voice rougher than before. “And you?”

“Catra.” 

Kahi opens their mouth, brows furrowing, but they don’t say anything. Catra lets the silence stretch until it gets uncomfortable. Keeping her ears on Kahi, she peers through the thin leaf curtain out towards the river, content to watch the birds. Her skin crawls from Kahi’s unwavering gaze, and as the silence morphs from uncomfortable to downright unbearable, Catra’s tail begins to lash across the ground. She flicks a small pebble from her bed, ignoring the ache in her shoulders as she digs an elbow into the ground and rests her hand on her head. 

“Don’t you remember?” Kahi asks, immediately slapping a hand over her mouth. 

Catra eyes the magicat. Sees the tense line of their shoulders, the lashing of their tail, the way their ears strain forward. Her first instinct is to play along, bluff her way through the situation. But this isn’t one of the Princesses and this isn’t an ordinary mission.

_To gain trust I have to show my hand,_ Catra thinks. _Just a little._

She cocks her head to the side, all innocent confusion. “Remember what?”

Another broken expression and Catra internally winces. The more she says the more she hurts Kahi, and if she keeps doing that there’s no way the magicat is going to trust her.

Catra shifts, her Force Captain Badge catching the light, and Kahi’s eyes bore into it.

“Why stay with the Horde?” Kahi asks.

Catra can’t help but admire their bluntness. She shrugs. “I’ve got my reasons.”

Something flickers in those green eyes and a smile begins pulling at their lips. They hum. “You’re not loyal to the Horde. You’re loyal to yourself.”

Catra bites the inside of her cheek before she can say something. She needs to think this through. Needs to think about how Kahi is going to interpret everything she says. “To a point.”

“Why be loyal to the Horde?”

“Why not be?” 

Kahi scoffs. “They destroy everything they touch,” Kahi says. “If they can’t control someone, they destroy them.”

Catra’s tail twitches. This isn’t how she planned this conversation going. “They haven’t destroyed me yet.”

“Which begs the question,” Kahi says, squinting. “How are they controlling you?” 

“They don’t control me,” she snarls, tail lashing. “They just think they do.”

Kahi cocks her head to the side. “Are you certain, little one?”

Catra’s thrown a pebble at Kahi before she realizes what she’s doing. The pebble hits the magicat square in the chest. “Don’t call me that,” Catra hisses.

Kahi hums again, and Catra thinks they might be impressed. “You remind me of her,” she says, then freezes, putting a hand over her mouth.

“Of who?” Catra says.

“Why did they abandon you?” Kahi asks.

Catra’s claws dig into the dirt. “Don’t change the conversation like that. I asked you a question and you’re going to answer it.” But then Kahi’s question sinks in and Catra bares her teeth. “They didn’t _abandon_ me. No one was _abandoned._ I’m here because they want me here.” She almost bites her tongue in her haste to close her mouth. Too much. She picks at the ground, tail twitching.

“And where, exactly, are you?”

Great question. “I don’t have to prove anything to you,” she spits, tail lashing out behind her. She raises her head to meet Kahi’s eyes, feeling her lower jaw jut out in defiance. Dares Kahi to call her on her bluff. 

Tries not to scream when Kahi does.

“Oh, little one,” they say, voice soft, pity spilling off of them in waves.

Catra’s body moves before she can register it, legs curling up beneath her and launching herself at Kahi. Or, she tries to, but none of her muscles can carry out the movement in its entirety, and she ends up crumbling to the ground, hard-pressed to catch herself before she eats dirt.

A white-hot ball of shame radiates from her chest as she grits her teeth, willing the frustrated scream in her throat away. She can’t remember the last time she’d been this ungainly and uncoordinated.

A hand touches her shoulder and she lashes out. Her claws meet their mark and Kahi gasps, jumping back.

“Stay away from me,” Catra grits out, pain lancing through her body.

“Okay,” Kahi breathes, already sitting more than an arm’s length away. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Catra scoffs. She’s heard that before. “Why are you even talking to me? Just leave me alone.” Screw an ally. Screw all of this. She can finish the mission on her own.

Kahi carefully begins ripping off a small section of their tunic and wrapping it around their forearm. Catra refuses to look away from them, refuses to feel bad about the blood she’s shed. They shouldn’t have touched her.

“I’ve already interfered,” Kahi says. “What’s the harm in continuing?”

Catra shrugs. Whatever punishment Lyra or Sati or whoever’s in charge of them gives is none of her business. “Thanks for the boar,” she says, glaring at the magicat.

Kahi snorts. “You’ve a fine way of being grateful,” they say, and before Catra can reply they sigh. “I wish I’d been quicker. If you had died I – well,” she shrugs, cutting herself off, refusing to look at Catra.

“What?” Catra says, unable to keep the heat from her voice. “You don’t know me. Maybe it was all part of my plan.”

Kahi gives her an utterly unimpressed look. “Nearly drowning was part of the plan?”

Before Catra can reply the branches directly behind her begin to rustle. Catra’s blood goes cold as every hair on her body stands at end, every instinct telling her to run.

Kahi’s eyes go wide. “Lyra, _don’t –”_

A blinding pain erupts at the back of her head and Catra yelps, pitching forward. Before she can land face first in the dirt, though, a hand grabs at her hair, nails scratching her scalp, and hauls her backward.

“Stay away,” Lyra hisses, their breath tickling the fur in her ear.

Catra sees Kahi prepare to leap but the dizziness crescendoes and she sinks into unconsciousness.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

 

She wakes all at once, hissing, tensing to defend herself. Blinking, she lifts her pounding head from the ground and groans, expecting to be somewhere new, but the curtain of leaves is familiar, as is the sight of the river.

Raising herself up to a sit takes longer than she’d like it to. Dizzy, her stomach threatening mutiny, she swallows a few times, taking deep breaths from her nose. Wills her body into a semblance of calm. Once she’s got herself under control, she opens her eyes.

The branches of her shelter are in disarray. She can clearly see where Kahi had leaped from, their claws digging into the dirt and kicking it up. Her eyes follow the damage, seeing where Kahi had tackled Lyra to the ground. The bush’s back limbs are broken, bright green innards glistening in the fading sunlight. At some point, the two must have ended up back in front of her little shelter because there’s more grass and dirt kicked up.

Catra takes a deep, slow breath, opening her mouth a bit to let the scents wash over her. Sorting through the now familiar scents of river and forest, she focuses more on the ones she doesn’t know so well – Kahi’s and Lyra’s. The scent of blood, tangy and unmistakable, hits her tongue and she tenses.

It’s still fresh.

If she moves now she can –

_What?_ She thinks, fending off that line of thought before it can start. _You’re injured, stranded in unfamiliar territory, and night is falling. What could you possibly do?_

“Kahi?” she yells, looking around, ears swiveling. “You alright?”

No one answers, and the sinking feeling in Catra’s stomach threatens to overwhelm her. Growls. Grits her teeth. Slams her fist into the ground for good measure because Kahi’s gone and she can barely move and she was so _close_ to getting some answers. 

“Are you serious?” she yells, grabbing a pebble and chucking it into the river. Again and again, until she’s throwing clumps of dirt. 

She breathes, reigns herself in. Searches the sky for the sun and finds it lower than she’d like it to be. Frustration, hot and empty, curls in her stomach.

_Calm down, Wildcat. You can’t think sensibly if you’re angry._ Scorpia’s voice, unwanted but familiar, whispers through her mind.

“And you can’t think,” she quips on instinct, letting her tail slap at the ground one more time. Her ears twitch, listening for Scorpia’s resulting chuckle, and when it doesn’t come she sighs.

She’s got work to do. Her knee needs to heal and judging by the bruise that’ll take at least a few days, maybe more. She can take care of the basics as she rests – fire, food, a better shelter.

The further she calms, the more exhaustion rears it’s head, slowly coaxing her into sleep. She shakes it off, crawling from her shelter. Fire. She needs fire. Needs one decent night of sleep more than she needs to keep herself under the radar.

She snorts. _Yeah, good job Catra. You’ve really kept yourself under the radar. Excellent work._

The fire takes time, and once she’s done with it she’s shaking, sweat gathering on her brow. She closes her eyes for a moment and when she opens them again the sun has already risen, her fire long since gone out. 

There’s everything and nothing to do. By that afternoon she’s eaten the rest of the dried meat Kahi had left for her and is by the river again, building a fish trap to catch the minnows swimming through the current. Resigns herself to her shelter underneath the bush and begins adding more bedding, begins weaving stronger branches through the leaf screen so that it’s sturdier. Dozes in the grass, in the sunlight, keeping an ear out for any unwanted visitors.

It’s on the second day that the feeling of being watched returns. She lifts her head up from where she’s been laying at the bank of the river, letting the cold water gently flow over her bad knee, and looks at the wall of undergrowth behind her.

She opens her mouth to call out Kahi’s name, but as the watched feeling cements it sends a shiver down her spine, and she closes her mouth.

_That’s not Kahi,_ she thinks, turning back towards the river but keeping her ears trained behind her. She brings her right wrist to her mouth and worries at it. Another variable, right when she was able to get a handle on the other one. Worse yet, this presence feels ambivalent. A _true_ watcher, content to let her live or die as nature directs.

There’ll be no ally to be found in this one.

_But,_ she thinks, _no outright danger, either._ She blinks, watching a minnow swim into her trap. _Unless I overstep._

More rules she needs to play by, rules she doesn’t know, and she bites her wrist hard enough to draw blood. Sighs. Dips it into the river.

Reevaluate. That’s what she needs to do. She’d let her emotions get the better of her when she’d first talked to Kahi. Let the pain get to her. Had she even gotten any real information? No details about their camp, how many of them there are, how dangerous they are – nothing.

Lonnie’s voice rings in her head: _That’s a whole lot of effort for a whole lot of nothing._

“Oh yeah,” Catra mumbles, “and what do you suggest I do?”

_Work smarter._

Catra groans. “Great. Lovely advice.” Slaps the water once to watch it ripple. 

Another three days go by before she can walk on her knee without it threatening to give out from under her. Her ribs still ache a bit but she can move around without any pain, can _breathe_ without any pain, and that’s good enough for her.

She stays awake on the fifth night, watching the moons slowly make their way across the sky. A cold wind reaches the ground, carrying a hint of salty water, and Catra shivers. Rubs her hands up and down her forearms and curls into herself. She’s got a fire going but it’s small and low, allowing the air to chill her enough to keep her awake. She doesn’t know if this mission has a timetable or not, but her traipsing off a waterfall put her behind schedule. She can’t mess this up.

The new watcher is subtler than Kahi but far more predictable. Once night well and truly settles in – around midnight if Catra has to guess – they step into the clearing to drink and steal a few minnows from her trap. Then they disappear, presumably to report to their leader – Sati, maybe, or Lyra – before coming back just as Catra wakes up. Then, they watch.

Catra waits, shivering, pinching her wrist when it feels like she might nod off anyway. Rehearses what she wants to say, going over every possible way they could answer in her mind and tailoring her responses.

The watcher slips so silently into the clearing that Catra almost misses it. She rises from her crouch, crawling out from her shelter as the watcher kneels on the banks of the river. 

“Nice night,” Catra says, tail twitching, smirking when the watcher tenses at the sound of her voice.

The watcher turns, stands, and Catra wills her face not to move. Another magicat. Taller than Kahi, their fur white with orange and black spots, their hair pulled back into a simple braid. Their amber eyes are cold, calculating, and Catra feels a shiver run up her spine. 

“Horde scum,” they say, and Catra’s ears twitch.

“So this is what you look like, Lyra,” Catra says. She frowns. “I thought you’d be more intimidating.”

Lyra’s grin is Catra’s only warning before the magicat lunges at her, claws glinting in the moonlight.

The blow is laughably easy to dodge. “Wow, you’re really not impressive at all,” she says, picking at one of her claws.

Lyra growls, lunging again, and the dance begins – Lyra on offense, Catra on defense.

It’s quicker than she thought it’d be – quieter too. Catra lures Lyra underneath the tree closest to her shelter – the one Kahi had strung food up in all those days ago – and grins when Lyra activates the tripwire.

In seconds Lyra’s suspended in the air, hanging upside down by a single foot.

“Oh wow,” Catra says, laughing, “I didn’t think that’d work.” And she hadn’t, not really. It’d always been Kyle who was in charge of snares and traps like these, and she’d only actually paid attention to him building one once.

Lyra thrashes, growling, using their abs to try and lift their upper body enough to cut the rope.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Catra says, watching as Lyra’s struggling tightens the noose around her ankle tighter, tighter, until blood begins seeping into their fur. 

Finally, Lyra quiets, amber eyes boring into Catra. “Get me out of here.”

Catra pretends to think about it. Shakes her head. Saunters up to Lyra and smirks. “Not until you answer my questions.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little shorter but the plot thickens! things'll def start movin now y'all
> 
>  
> 
> .......i'm STILL not over the trailer for season 3 like......ohmygod i can't WAIT
> 
> also i've been listening to fleurie's 'soldier' while writing this chap and the last chap if anyone was wondering.


	7. step for step

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another shoutout to patheticfrog for betaing - no u can't look up spoilers and no i'm not gonna spoil it for u 
> 
> no special trigger warnings for this one
> 
> yes i'm still shook from season 3 and yes i've watched it more than once and YES IM OBSESSED AND WILL NOT TAKE CRITICISM 
> 
> enjoy!

There’s a look in Lyra’s gaze that speaks of things Catra hasn’t yet seen. She’s seen it before in the older soldiers, the ones that lived through the first wave of the Princess Rebellion – all flint eyed and steel-backed, no longer daring the world to raise a hand at them but rather expecting it, accepting it, and ready to strike back.

It sends shivers down Catra’s spine, making the fur there stand on end, but she holds Lyra’s gaze anyway.

Lyra speaks first, staring off into the middle distance. “You’ll gain nothing from me.”

Catra nods. She hadn’t expected any different, not really. “We’ll see,” she says, trailing a claw down Lyra’s calico face.

Lyra doesn’t so much as twitch, and Catra can’t help but feel respect for the magicat.

“How’d you get these scars?” she asks, circling, tracing the two silvery-white lines on Lyra’s nose. No verbal answer, but Catra doesn’t miss the way Lyra’s tail twitches. 

She smirks. “Must have been some battle,” Catra says. “You fought the Horde, right?” Catra leans in close, keeping an eye on Lyra’s unbound arms, and whispers in Lyra’s ear. “Who’d you lose?”

_There._ A minute movement of Lyra’s lip curling up.

Catra leans away. Tries to meet Lyra’s gaze but the other magicat won’t have it, choosing to continue her middle-distance stare.

“Aww, did I touch a nerve?” she says, poking Lyra’s chest and pushing her lightly, just enough so that she begins swaying. “Someone died, didn’t they? Who was it? You can tell me.”

Nothing.

Catra continues, slowly circling, her arms crossed in front of her chest. “I know it must be hard, facing the fact that you lost against the Horde. I bet the Princesses spoke all about how ‘love and friendship can save the day,’” she says, voice high pitched in mockery. She smirks. “I bet you went out onto that battlefield and expected victory.” Catra stops in front of Lyra and moves in, getting close enough to Lyra’s upside-down face that their noses nearly touch. “Who’d you kill, Lyra? Who died because of you?”

Lyra’s arms twitch as if to lash out and Catra eyes them, smirking. “You can if you want to,” she says. “Go ahead. I bet it would feel good, hitting a Horde soldier.”

The muscle in Lyra’s jaw begins to tense.

“It wouldn’t change the fact that you killed them, though,” she says. “You just had to go against the Horde, didn’t you? Even though you knew it would be a losing battle. How did you convince them to fight?” Catra asks, assuming an innocent face, her eyes wide and questioning. “Did you tell them it was for the greater good? Did you tell them it wasn’t a suicide mission?”

Lyra’s eyes flash and Catra grins, going for the jugular. “Tell me, Lyra,” she says. “Who died because you couldn’t face the truth?” A full-body twitch that nearly sends Catra leaping away, but Lyra holds firm.

Catra goes in one more time. “Come on Lyra. You can tell me. Who died because of your _pride?_ ”

Catra has a split second to think _oh, I’ve done it this time, haven’t I?_ before Lyra swipes at her, a quick, brutal movement that Catra barely manages to dodge. 

As focused as she is on the first swing, she misses the second, and Lyra’s claws manage to nick her as she springs backward. Catra holds back a pained hiss, feeling the blood trickle into her fur, and meets Lyra’s gaze.

Lyra’s voice is thunderously calm. “Don’t speak of things you know nothing about, traitor.”

_Traitor?_ Catra scoffs. “Sorry, I can’t take you seriously when you’re swinging around like that,” she says, inspecting a claw. “Besides, what’s there to know? I’ve got all the information I need.” _Not really, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her._

Lyra’s tail lashes. “Ignorant fool.”

Catra’s ears twitch, hearing the echo of Shadow Weaver in those words, and she grits her teeth. “If I’m so clueless, why don’t you do everyone a favor and enlighten me?” Lyra doesn’t answer, and before she can go back to that middle ground stare Catra opens her mouth again. “It’s alright. You can’t help your cowardice,” Catra says, pulling the last bit of rope from where she’d stashed it in her belt.

“And you can’t seem to help using words instead of actions,” Lyra hisses back, her ears tight against her head. 

Catra feels the grin on her face turn ugly. “Well, don’t say you didn’t ask for it,” she says, brandishing her claws. She swipes for Lyra’s face but the magicat blocks the blow with her forearms. Catra moves quick, using the rope to bind Lyra’s forearms. It’s a sloppy knot but strong enough to hold her, at least for a little while.

She smirks as Lyra struggles. “What? You didn’t think I used all of the rope for this, did you?” She puts her hands on Lyra’s forearms and digs her claws in deep, baring her teeth as blood wells up. “Answer one little question and I’ll let you go.”

Amber eyes meet hers and Lyra growls.

_Which question to ask?_ she thinks. Which question would get her the most information without revealing just how little she really knows?

“Who do you think I am?” 

Lyra freezes, blinks. “What?”

“You and Kahi said something once, right after I went over the waterfall, and Kahi kept hinting at it.” Catra narrows her eyes and tightens her grip. “You think I’m someone important. Who?”

Something flickers in Lyra’s eyes and Catra can’t name it for the life of her. 

“Lyra!”

A shout shatters the moment and Catra whirls around, half crouched. A magicat bursts through the trees, all teeth and too bright eyes. Catra shifts behind Lyra in one deft movement, her claws at her throat, her back pressed up against the tree.

The other magicat stops, his tawny fur bristling. “Unhand her,” he says, flexing his claws.

“Or what?” Catra asks. “You’ll hurt me? Been there, done that. Lyra and I have had this conversation already and I’d really rather not repeat it.” She glances down at Lyra. “Didn’t know you had friends.”

Lyra gives her an unimpressed look. “What? Did you forget I was on my way to give a report?”

Yes. “No,” Catra says.

The other magicat squints, and Catra can almost see the wheels in his brain turn. “I haven’t seen you before.”

_Oh?_ Catra seizes the opportunity. “I’m new. Name’s Catra. You?”

“Don’t say another word Caton,” Lyra says, voice like a whip, and Caton jumps as if shocked.

Catra scoffs. “Are you really going to listen to her? It’s not like she can do anything to you, tied up as she is.”

Caton scowls. “I’ll give you one chance. Let her go and I won’t hurt you.”

Catra laughs, unable to help herself. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just – you actually believe you can hurt me,” she says. After a beat, she lets her face drop, lets her body language sharpen. “I’d like to see you try.”

Caton’s eyes flicker from her hand to her face and then, for a half-second, above her.

Her eyes follow his gaze, peering through the tree limbs, the fur on the back of her neck beginning to rise. Blue eyes meet hers and her heart pounds against her chest. 

“Are you going to stay up there or are you coming down?” Catra asks.

A flash of white is all she sees before the other magicat is on her, all darting jabs and bared teeth. Catra leaps away from Lyra, her back to the river, and the magicat follows, hot on her tail. 

There’s no time for banter. It’s all movement, all muscle memory, all action and reaction. Catra grits her teeth as the magicat’s claws rake against her forearms. She kicks out a leg and her opponent grunts and stumbles. Catra leaps for her but she rolls away at the last second and jumps, slamming into Catra’s side.

They roll for a moment, a tangle of limbs and claws before Catra can tuck her knees into her chest and kick the white magicat off of her. The magicat flies through the air but lands on her feet, rushing Catra without skipping a beat. Catra tenses, waits, and flashes a hand out, leaping as she does so, her claws scraping the magicat’s shoulder. She pivots, slamming her knees into the magicat’s back and driving them both down into the dirt.

Catra smirks and opens her mouth – _is that really all you’ve got? –_ before a tawny shape hurls her into the water. Arms tight around her own and she gasps, choking, water getting up her nose and her chest constricts and she can’t breathe she can’t breathe _shecan’tbreathe –_

She’s hauled out of the water, shaking, shrieking, invisible hands around her lungs and the smell of oil and machinery pressing in around her. Hordak’s voice in her ears: _Pathetic. Pathetic. Patheticpatheticpatheticpatheticpa–_

Jerking, she lashes out, claws sinking into flesh, a high-pitched yelp answering.

“Tie her up!”

The unknown voice overlays with Shadow Weaver’s and Catra snarls so hard her throat aches. “Get away from me,” she yells. “Get away!”

The arms around her tighten, constricting, her heart beating so hard she can feel her pulse in her fingertips, her tail tip, her toes. She struggles, throwing herself against Hordak, but it’s no use – within moments her wrists are tied and her eyes burn.

She can’t stop shaking.

All at once, the arms disappear. She gasps, a great heaving thing that stretches her ribcage as far as it’ll go, and crumbles to her knees. Opens her eyes to make sure she’s not back in Hordak’s lab.

Blue eyes meet hers. “There’s nowhere to run, Horde scum. Not even the likes of you can walk on water.”

Gasping, Catra manages a grin. “Wanna bet?”

As she blinks away the black spots from her vision she’s hauled up by Caton, who tightens the rope on her wrists again. She holds back a hiss. Begins to shiver as the adrenaline wears off, the water in her fur sinking down to her skin.

The white magicat scoffs at her and turns, heading for Lyra. With a few quick swipes Lyra falls to the ground in an ungraceful heap, and Catra swallows her snicker. _Serves her right,_ she thinks, watching as the white magicat undoes the rope work on Lyra’s arms and helps her up.

Lyra shrugs off the magicat. Rolls her shoulders. Doesn’t pause as she strides over to Catra, though Catra knows that ankle has got to be hurting.

“What do we do with her?” the white magicat asks, one hand on her hip, the other tense at her side, claws still unsheathed.

Catra feels the weight of Lyra’s gaze, the assessment, the unspoken question of what amount of effort she’s worth. She bristles under it and meets it head on.

The moment drags. Catra’s tail twitches.

Finally, Lyra steps forward, one hand outstretched, and Catra braces herself for the blow.

It doesn’t come. Instead, Lyra touches Catra’s mask.

Catra can’t help the widening of her eyes or the way her mouth goes dry. Her stomach drops to her feet and she swallows, fighting off the urge to throw up.

“You’ll not be needing this,” Lyra says, removing it from Catra’s forehead.

Catra lunges but Lyra’s quicker, already out of biting range as Caton holds her back. A white flash in Catra’s peripherals lets her know the claws digging into her throat aren’t Caton’s.

She freezes, despite every muscle in her body begging for movement. “That’s mine!” she yells, tail lashing. “Give it back. You can’t take it!” 

Lyra’s eyes sparkle but her face remains impassive. “Touched a nerve, did I?”

Catra growls, straining forward, uncaring of the sharp pinpricks of pain at her throat. _Not that,_ she thinks, over and over and over. Catra’s chest tightens, eyes stinging, wrists burning as she struggles to free them from their bindings. She leans forward and snaps her head back, feeling it collide with Caton’s nose, and before the white magicat can go for her jugular Catra kicks out, her foot colliding with the magicat’s knee.

Catra leaps for Lyra. Between one second and the next, she’s slammed into the ground, breath leaving her lungs in a rush. She chokes, coughs, flails against the iron arm pinning her down.

Amber eyes meet hers. “There’s a lot you need to learn, Horde scum.”

“Give. It. Back,” Catra spits between breaths. 

“No,” Lyra says.

Catra growls, the sound coming from deep in her gut, and Lyra’s ears twitch. She presses her arm into Catra’s chest once more before getting up, the mask still in her hand.

“One more outburst and I throw this in the river,” Lyra says.

Catra sits up, gritting her teeth. Clenches her hands hard enough that her claws draw blood. Her skin crawls, tail lashing against the ground, every cell in her body ready to fight.

She takes a deep breath, half to calm down, half to make sure she still can. Meeting Lyra’s eyes, she nods sharply, allowing herself to be hauled up from the ground by the white magicat.

Lyra tucks her mask into the folds of her tunic. Turns to Caton, whose head is tilted up to stem the bleeding from his nose, and says, “Lead on.”

Caton nods, glares at Catra, and begins leading them past the tree where Catra captured Lyra. The white magicat shoves Catra forward and she stumbles, not wanting to let Lyra out of her sight.

_She’ll throw it in the river the moment I turn my back,_ Catra thinks. She looks over her shoulder, neck straining at the angle. Lyra brings up the rear, her ears swiveling, listening, already moving on.

Another shove from the white magicat forces her to keep her gaze forward. She knows she should pay attention, knows she should be keeping track of landmarks and distance and the spots where they pause for a moment so that Caton can sniff the air, but her mask isn’t on her head and she’s trapped and alone and –

_Get yourself together!_ she snaps, twisting her wrists. The shock of pain focuses her, drives away the swirling cloud of panic for a moment. She needs to think. The mask doesn’t matter. It’s nothing more than a symbol of how weak she’s become. _Caring_ got her into this mess – she can’t care anymore. It’s just another way to be manipulated.

_It’s just a bit of metal,_ she thinks, over and over again until the part of her brain that’s panicking goes numb. She shoves the feeling into the deepest pit inside of herself and turns her back.

She’s not going to endanger the mission for some stupid, flimsy bit of metal.

She thinks back onto her conversation with Lyra – had she gotten anything useful? Caton had said something about never seeing her before and he’d been confused by it. Surely that means the population of magicats is small enough so that everyone knows everyone’s faces. Whatever force she’s facing, then, is smaller than the Horde’s, smaller than the Rebellion’s.

There’d been a battle, too – a bad one, if the look in Lyra’s eyes and her reaction meant anything. She’d lost someone – probably many someones. Hordak must have shipped the survivors off someplace where they wouldn’t bother him, but where?

Catra sucks in a sharp breath, eyes widening. The tranquilizer. The saltwater. The white magicat’s quip about not being able to walk on water.

_No._

She forces that line of thought to a screeching halt. There’s no way. If she were actually on Beast Island, she’d be dead by now. Nothing survives. She probably crossed one of the larger lakes near the sea, is all.

“We’re here.”

Caton’s voice jerks her from her thoughts. She looks around, searching for clues, and comes up empty.

The white magicat shoves past her, scoffing. “You really are a fool, aren’t you?” she asks, leaping up into one of the trees and disappearing between the branches.

Caton tenses, ready to spring, but seems to remember himself, looking behind Catra. “Need any help, Lyra?”

Lyra’s hand is heavy on Catra’s shoulder. “No. Go with N’yra and update the messengers on the situation. We’ll stay here.”

Caton nods and disappears into the treetops.

_Clever,_ Catra thinks. That’s why she had such a hard time pinning down her watcher’s ground movements – they were barely there. Kahi had been in the trees, following her from above. _I’ll need to learn to look up more often._

Lyra’s quiet in the grey dawn light, steering Catra to one of the nearby trees. Lyra gestures and Catra raises her arms above her head, her back to the tree. Lyra’s grip is steel as she lifts Catra up by her elbows and hangs her from one of the lower branches. Catra’s toes barely brush the ground. Her wrists ache as she hangs, swaying slightly. Lyra gives her a once over and climbs up the tree, dropping back down to the ground before Catra can think about escaping.

Her movements are deft, and within moments Catra’s ankles are tied together.

Lyra nods. “Stay here.”

Catra scowls. “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

Lyra ignores her, instead disappearing into the treetops once more.

Birds begin calling to one another as the sun continues its ascent. Her stomach grumbles and she licks her lips. What she wouldn’t give for some water. She swivels her ears and closes her eyes, dozing in the warm light as she listens. There’s wind rustling the treetops – a constant thing, she’s learned, and more than likely how the magicats disguise their movements. She frowns. Tries to suss out some form of rhythm to the air currents, where one gust tapers off before the next gust crashes in.

She breathes in time with the swaying of the tree. The movement is barely detectable but her body, hung as it is, responds. The sunlight warms her fur, making her mind fuzzy, and the deeper she falls into dozing the better she’s able to sense the tree’s movement, the wind’s rhythm, and find the pattern.

There’s a part of her that knows she should be trying to escape. They could be planning on killing her, especially because they’re mistaking her for some sort of traitor. But her mission is clear: make contact and bring them to the Horde’s point of view. So she’ll stay here until she’s at their main camp or until they actually try and kill her.

Plus, there’s no way there isn’t someone watching her or some kind of trap waiting for her. They’ve left her alone, dangling from a branch. Not exactly hard to escape from. One wrong move from her will set something off, and before she touches the ground she’ll be shot full of arrows or something.

A rustling breaks her concentration and all at once she’s back in her own body, her hands long since gone numb. Her knees lift without her say-so, a feeble attempt to protect her stomach from whatever’s walking through the undergrowth.

Lyra eyes her as she enters Catra’s field of vision. There’s a smear of blood on her cheek, and slung over her shoulder is the carcass of one of the too-large rabbits. 

Catra’s mouth waters and she relaxes, letting her toes brush the ground again. Watches as Lyra drops the carcass an arms-length away from her and begins gathering material for a fire. The movements are rote, instinctive – Catra can spot that kind of going-through-the-motions anywhere.

The minutes pass. Once Lyra’s skinned, gutted, and spitted the creature, she turns the full weight of her gaze on to Catra.

Catra meets it. “So, what’s the plan? Are you taking me back to your camp, are you killing me, are you throwing me down another waterfall? What’s on your mind.”

Lyra sighs and stands, moving towards Catra. Unable to help herself, Catra tenses, fur fluffing up a bit, her eyes glued to Lyra’s hands. Instead of going for her stomach or face, though, they reach up, grabbing her wrists, and dragging her off the branch. Lyra doesn’t wait for her to stand, unceremoniously letting her crumble to the ground.

Catra lands at Lyra’s feet with a grunt, clenching and unclenching her fists to get some feeling back in them. Her shoulders and ribs ache from being stretched for so long, and the cuts on her forearms sting. She spots a length of cloth wrapped around Lyra’s ankle and smirks.

“How’s the ankle?” she asks, grinning up at Lyra.

Lyra ignores her, instead settling on the other side of the fire. Amber eyes pin Catra down, and a shiver races up her spine.

“One last meal before I kill you, traitor.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think we should all take a moment and be thankful i didn't bash catra in the head again bc honestly i don't think i can do that again without giving her a concussion and she really doesn't need one right now lmao


	8. Interlude: Once More Through Gritted Teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out and thanks to my loyal beta reader patheticfrog
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: jumping to one's death
> 
> longer chapter this time because i'm about to enter one hell of a shittily scheduled work week and i might be late on the next chapter but also because, well. had to deal with Shadow Weaver
> 
> enjoy!

**Ten Days Earlier**

The worst part is, she knows it’s a dream.

Before the sword, before She-Ra, she rarely remembered a dream, and even if she did she could immerse herself in them – the winning of a glorious battle, the accomplishment of becoming Force Captain. They’d feel so real that when she woke up she’d have to take a minute to come back to herself.

Now, though, she knows.

Catra smiles at her, wind blowing through her tangled hair, Adora’s fingers itching to brush them out.

“Hey, Adora,” Catra says, leaning against the rail of the balcony.

Adora’s chest clenches. “Hey, Catra,” she says, voice this side of too thick. She clears her throat. Lets the weight of the dream settle around her, soft and muted.

Catra’s ears twitch as she turns away, gazing out onto the Fright Zone. “Do you remember?”

Adora blinks. There’s a lot she remembers – the weight of the sword in her hand; that first, blinding flash of She-Ra’s powers; claws digging deep into her back; her heart cracking open every time Catra refused to take her hand. But she remembers other things, too – nights spent curled together after a training exercise went too far and left them both trembling; wrestling matches this side of too playful, this side of too warm, this side of too reluctant to hurt the other; glances across hallways and brushing shoulders and a shared ration bar.

The weight of the memories is sometimes heavier than the She-Ra mantle, and Adora’s shoulders ache with it all.

She steps forward until she’s leaning against the railing too, keeping her eyes on Catra’s face. “I’m going to need something more specific.”

She expects the all-too-familiar smirk, but Catra frowns. “I’ve been trying to remember. Do you remember?”

Adora sighs. Even in her dreams Catra is just as confusing as ever. She doesn’t answer, instead letting her eyes trace Catra’s profile. She’s different in her dreams – the fire is still there, still burning in her eyes, but it’s contained. Nowhere near the reckless inferno it’s become. She’s less tense, too, less hair-trigger attack and more contemplation, thinking through the action before going through with it.

Catra’s nose twitches and her face scrunches up. Adora laughs and reaches a hand to smooth the resulting wrinkles. _I shouldn’t be surprised to be able to touch you,_ she thinks when Catra shifts closer. A lump forms in Adora’s throat. When was the last time she touched Catra and knew how the other girl would react?

“What’d you smell this time?” Adora asks, letting her hands linger on Catra’s face.

“Nothing,” Catra says. “Just a feeling I can’t shake.”

“Tell me about it,” Adora says, wincing as the words come out like a command. _Can’t you do anything right?_ Her hand twitches in an aborted movement for the sword that isn’t there, and she tenses, readying herself for Catra’s attack.

The blow doesn’t come. Instead, Catra hums, looking back over the Fright Zone. “Remember all the plans we made for this place? How we were going to rule it one day?”

The ache in Adora’s chest is a familiar one. “Yeah,” Adora says. “But those days are over now.”

Catra hops onto the railing, crouches to gain balance, and then stands. Adora can’t help but track those movements – half out of appreciation and half out of apprehension, watching as Catra’s fur fluffs up.

Catra turns towards her, all the warmth in her eyes gone. “You need to wake up, Adora.”

Adora frowns. No one's ever noticed that she's in a dream before. “Catra?”

Catra smirks  - the infuriatingly cocky one that sets Adora’s teeth on edge – and crouches as if to leap. “You can’t save everyone, Adora.”

Adora lurches forward, her hands brushing Catra’s arm, but Catra’s too fast. She leaps, fur almost glowing in the red-green light of the Fright Zone, and plummets down down _down –_

Adora wakes with a gasp, springing upright as if burned, her dagger in her hand and her heart in her throat. Something rustles at the end of her bed and she moves without thinking, tackling the intruder to the ground with a yell.

The intruder doesn’t fight back. They crumple to the ground with a huff, and the moment Adora spies the mask she’s scrambling away, reaching for the sword. 

“For the honor of Grayskull!”

The transition from Adora lasts seconds and lifetimes. Power flows through her, white-hot and ice-cold, all sensation and lack of. There’s a sliver of a moment where she doesn’t exist – not as Adora, not as She-Ra, not as anything – but the moment is over in less than a blink and she’s She-Ra.

She levels the sword to Shadow Weaver’s throat. “Stay down.”

Shadow Weaver coughs and Adora’s throat aches in sympathy. “Is that any way to greet me, Adora?”

Adora’s jaw clenches and she grits her teeth so hard she’s half afraid she’ll break them. “I can think of more violent ways, but this’ll do.”

Her bedroom door bursts open as Glimmer and Bow race in, sleep rumpled and wild-eyed, a guard following them.

“Where’s the danger?” Bow asks, casing the perimeter of the room, his bow drawn and ready. 

Glimmer’s eyes narrow when she spots Shadow Weaver. “You,” she says, voice low, hands glowing with energy.

Shadow Weaver sighs. “Yes, it’s me. Lovely to see you again." 

“Adora, are you okay?” Bow asks, moving forward to stand at her side.

She nods. “As well as I can be,” she says, not looking away from Shadow Weaver.

Shadow Weaver stares back, something like awe in her eyes, but it’s too cold, too calculating, and Adora shivers under her gaze.

“Such power,” Shadow Weaver says, reaching a hand out to She-Ra’s sword.

Glimmer’s on her in an instant, the energy in her hands glowing brighter. “Do it,” she says, lips curling. “I dare you.”

“Whoa there Glimmer,” Bow says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Calm down?” Glimmer asks, rounding on him. “How can you expect me to _calm down?_ She’s evil, Bow. I’m not taking any chances.” 

Bow nods. “I know, but look at her.”

Shadow Weaver’s breaths come in audible wheezes punctuated with tight, hacking coughs. Her hair is lank, greasy, no hint of the wild mane it once was. Adora squints. Her shadows pulse over her, sliding off her skin like oil, and her hands tremble.

“Something’s wrong with her,” Adora says, lowering her sword and detransforming. “Her shadows are too – too –”

“Watery?” Bow asks, scratching his head. “Translucent? Pale?” 

“All of the above,” Adora says.

Glimmer huffs but backs off, the glow of her hands lessening. “Bow, shoot her with one of your net arrows, just in case.”

Before he can move Queen Angella flies in, eyes flinty in the low light of the room. She lands with a soft gust of wind, already calling out orders. “Guards, apprehend Shadow Weaver and take her to the prison cells.” She turns to the guard who must have sent for her, their spear still pointed at Shadow Weaver. “Tell my Commander of the Guard to double the number of soldiers at the Moonstone and triple it at our borders. I want Bright Moon impenetrable.”

The guard nods, salutes, and dashes away as three other guards move in, one of them locking Shadow Weaver’s limp wrists into a pair of blue handcuffs. As soon as they lock they glow blue and Shadow Weaver groans, curling in on herself. 

Angella smiles and steps closer, leaning down. “You didn’t think I wasn’t prepared for this, did you?”

Shadow Weaver laughs, a wheezing thing that makes Adora’s throat itch. “I must admit to some surprise. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Angella stands, a pillar of steel. “Take her away.”

The guards drag Shadow Weaver away and within moments all is quiet again.

“I didn’t know Bright Moon had a prison,” Adora says, setting the sword on her bed.

Angella flinches. “We don’t. But we do have a mostly unfurnished guest room.”

“Let me speak to her,” Adora says, already moving to follow the guards. “I know how she thinks, I know the tricks she plays, let me –”

“Absolutely not,” Angella says, blocking her path. “She’s put you through enough pain. You’re not to go anywhere near her.” 

“But –” 

Angella shakes her head. “No,” she says, voice soft but steely. She brushes a stray hair out of Adora’s face, runs her thumb across her cheekbone. “I’ll not let her hurt you. Not again.”

Adora can’t help but lean into the touch. “Okay.” 

“Good. Now that that’s settled, tell me what happened. How did she get in here? Did she attack you?”

“I think she came in through the window,” Adora says. “And she didn’t attack me so much as hover at the foot of my bed. I woke up from a dream and she was there. In fact,” she says, rubbing her chin, moving to stand at the foot of her bed. “I don’t think she meant to attack me at all.”

Glimmer scoffs. “It’s Shadow Weaver. Of course she was going to attack you.”

Bow hums. “I don’t know, I think I’m with Adora on this one. Look at the angle,” he says, gesturing to Adora. “If Shadow Weaver really wanted to hurt her, she’d have come from the side, not the footboard. I think she was watching.”

A shiver runs up the length of Adora’s spine, the hair on her arms prickling. “Great. She was watching me sleep. Somehow I’d prefer it if she was planning to attack me and not doing a good job.” 

“Either way, this won’t be happening again,” Angella says, closing the windows. “I need to send a message to Castaspella. In the meantime,” she says, eyeing the three of them, “you all will stay in the castle, understand?”

“But Mom –”

“No buts, Glimmer,” she says, leaving before Glimmer can get a word in.

“It could be a trap,” Glimmer says. “We need to scout around, make sure the Horde isn’t hiding anywhere.”

“Or,” Adora says, “we can figure out how to get into that cell. I need to talk to her.”

Bow and Glimmer glance at each other, condensing a ten-minute conversation into a couple of eye movements. Adora shakes away the hurt that blooms in her chest, shakes away the image of Catra’s eyes across the training grounds, telling her _Octavia’s being obnoxious again_ or _Watch this_ or _Wanna meet up later?_ or any number of things.

“I’m doing this whether you want me to or not,” Adora says before they can string their argument together. “I can handle her now, and both of you will be there as backup. Shadow Weaver is weak and in the middle of enemy territory. She can’t hurt me, not here.”

Glimmer throws her hands into the hair. “She’ll try to hurt you again, Adora. She’s from the Horde, and people from the Horde are evil.”

Adora narrows her eyes. “I’m from the Horde. Am I evil?” 

“No!” Bow and Glimmer shout. 

Bow shakes his head. “You’re different. You’re good and kind and –” 

“A Princess?”

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Bow says.

“People change,” Adora says. “I have to believe that. I have to believe that somewhere deep, deep down there’s someone who wants to do good. Otherwise, what’s all of this for?” Adora says, gesturing around the room. “I didn’t know the Horde was evil until I was showed just how evil they are. Maybe she just needs someone to show her.”

Glimmer rubs her temples. “But she was already shown, Adora. Don’t you remember? She was on our side when the Horde first showed up. She chose to join them.”

“Look. I’m not saying we need to convince her the Horde is evil or that we need to sway her to the Rebellion’s side. All I want to do is talk to her and figure out why she’s here. Everything else can wait.” She picks up her sword, strapping it to her back, and holds her hand out to Glimmer. “Please?”

Glimmer groans, throwing up her hands again, but takes Adora’s hand in hers. Bow puts a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder and Glimmer huffs. “This is a bad idea. I’m calling it now.”

Bow shrugs. “Most of our ideas are pretty bad.”

Between one blink and the next they’re in prison cell, Shadow Weaver trapped in a glowing blue circle.

“Whoa,” Glimmer says, eyeing the circle. “I guess Mom wasn’t kidding when she said she was prepared.”

“Your mom does spellwork?” Bow asks.

“It’s sloppy,” Shadow Weaver says. “If I had even a fraction of my power it wouldn’t hold me.”

Adora circles Shadow Weaver. “Why are you here?” 

“To see you, of course.”

“Try again.”

“You always were the more clever one,” Shadow Weaver says, and Adora bristles.

“I had to be,” she says, gritting her teeth. If she wasn’t clever, Catra got hurt. If she wasn’t clever, Catra was denied dinner. If she wasn’t clever, if she didn’t live up to Shadow Weaver’s expectations, it was always Catra who ended up taking the punishment.

Shadow Weaver sniffs. Coughs. Groans. “My Adora,” she says.

“Not anymore,” Adora says, standing in front of her. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“I’m dying, child.”

“You’re lying,” Adora spits, taking a step back.

“I don’t think she is,” Glimmer says. “Look at the shadows.”

The shadows slough off of Shadow Weaver, landing wetly on the floor, and Adora’s stomach turns at the sound of it. Shadow Weaver sighs. “Please.”

Adora transforms without a thought, letting She-Ra’s power pour through her. When the transformation is over she hovers just outside of the circle, staring down the blade into Shadow Weaver’s eyes. “I heal you, you tell me anything I want to know. Deal?”

“Deal." 

She steps into the circle, kneels, and lets Shadow Weaver place her hands over hers on the sword. “I don’t know how to heal,” Adora says.

“I was a teacher, before the Horde,” Shadow Weaver says. “Focus, and don’t be afraid of the power held within the sword’s runestone. Fear always leads to weakness.”

Adora growls. “I’ve done this before and it never works.”

Shadow Weaver tuts, a sound she’s so familiar with that for a moment she’s back in the Fright Zone, surrounded by metal. She blinks and shakes her head.

“Your frustration has always been your undoing, Adora. Let your mind be at peace and focus.”

Adora closes her eyes. She-Ra’s power is immense, a blinding, fiery light that threatens to consume her. She grits her teeth. Calm. She needs to be calm. She thinks of the small, dark room deep in the belly of Hordak’s castle, long since abandoned. Of hours spent wiling away the time there, just her and Catra avoiding their responsibilities. Catra’s head in her lap, the magicat drowsy, letting her card her fingers through her hair.

“I wish it could always be like this,” Catra says, voice slow and heavy in contentment, and Adora’s chest is so full she can hardly breathe with it. 

“Me too,” she whispers.

The inferno of She-Ra’s powers softens, becoming sunlight on a winter’s day, and she directs it towards Shadow Weaver.

“Good, Adora,” Shadow Weaver breathes after a few moments, letting go of the sword. “I knew you could do it.” 

Adora frowns, stands, and leaves the circle. “I don’t need your praise. Tell me what you’re doing here,” she says, mentally shaking away the feeling of Catra’s hair on her hands.

“I’m here because I needed you to heal me,” Shadow Weaver says, standing. With a gesture, the glowing blue circle is gone. “I did say that this spellwork was sloppy, didn’t I?”

Glimmer yells, throwing a glowing orb as Bow lets loose an arrow. Shadow Weaver dodges both of them, rushing at Adora.

Adora freezes as Shadow Weaver’s shadows pool around her, locking her into place. “I’ll give you a hint, little one,” Shadow Weaver hisses, “as thanks for healing me. You ought to ask yourself who you really are, and just how you came to the Horde.”

Then, with a flick of her wrist, Shadow Weaver disappears. 

“Adora, are you okay?” Glimmer yells, hands on Adora’s shoulders.

“Y-Yeah,” Adora says, detransforming from She-Ra. _Is that how Catra felt every time she did that?_ she thinks, feeling the ice-cold terror sink deep into her bones. She’d been helpless, utterly so. She had a sinking sensation that the only reason she was still breathing was because Shadow Weaver hadn’t commanded her lungs to stop.

Her hands clench around her forearms as she hugs herself. “This is bad, guys, this is really bad.”

Bow nods. “We’re screwed.”

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

It goes over about as well as Adora had expected. Angella had separated the three of them and confined them to their rooms, and had even gone as far as sending Bow back to his fathers’ house. After a week of being left alone with nothing but her thoughts, though, Adora feels half-mad with anxiety.

If Shadow Weaver hurts anyone now, it’s on her.

And the question of her origin runs on a loop in her mind, resulting in hours spent sitting and staring at the walls, thinking back on her earliest memories. There’s only the Horde. The Fright Zone. Shadow Weaver’s strict hands and Hordak’s gleaming eyes. Everyone watching her because she was Shadow Weaver’s charge. Then, slowly, Lonnie and Catra and Rogelio and Kyle. Cuddle piles when they were too young to know better, late nights spent talking about future plans involving sneaking into the kitchens to get the good ration bars.

There’s the Horde and nothing else. No other place in her memory.

So, after a week, she sneaks out. It’s easier and harder than she expected. After all of Glimmer’s rebellion, the guards are more ready to deal with a teleporting princess rather than an ex-soldier, and within minutes Adora’s dashing through the grounds, heading for the Whispering Woods.

If she can get to Light Hope she’ll get answers. Hopefully.

At the boundary between the Woods and Bright Moon she stops. There’s something wrong. Her eyes flit back and forth, squinting in the moonslight, watching the shadows. After a moment she spots one that doesn’t sway in tune with the windblown trees around it and reaches for her sword.

“Who’s there?” she says.

Of all the people she thought would step out into the field, Lonnie is one of the last.

“Lonnie? What are you doing here?” A pause. Then: “If this is some trick of Catra’s –”

“It’s not,” Lonnie says, voice steel and eyes glacial. She swallows. “It’s not a trick.”

“Then what is it?” Because all she sees is Lonnie sneaking around the edge of Bright Moon in the middle of the night, a cold look in her eyes, and the tense line of her shoulders hinting at nothing good.

Lonnie looks at her. “Where're your friends? Didn’t think you went solo anymore.”

Adora squints. “They’re around.”

Lonnie cracks a smile, small and dark and bitter. “You still can’t bluff worth anything.”

Adora stays silent. She knows she can’t – bluffing had always been Catra’s job, and on the off chance Catra wasn’t beside her then it was Lonnie’s. For all of their mutual dislike of each other, Catra and Lonnie always knew how to play off of one another, knew what holes to fill in the other’s stories. Every time they got together it was a verbal spar Adora could never quite keep up with.

“You never answered the question, Lonnie. Why are you here?”

“You need to promise me something first,” Lonnie says. “You can’t take me prisoner. I need to get back to the Fright Zone by dawn. I’m just here to deliver a message.”

Adora shakes her head. “You know I can’t do that. If you’re not going to stay here as a deserter of the Horde, then you’re going to stay here as a prisoner.”

Lonnie scoffs. “Does Bright Moon even have a prison? Seems like the place where they’d empty a guest room and pretend it’s a cell.”

It’s all Adora can do to keep her face straight. “That’s not the point.”

Lonnie shifts, her eyes darting around, casing their surroundings. “I’ve got information about Catra that Scorpia thought you should know,” she says. Her voice takes on a bitter edge. “Not that I think you deserve to.” 

Adora ignores that last part, her heart in her throat. Her chest grows tight because this isn’t how things work, this isn’t how the game is played, this isn’t how Catra would send a message to her, which means –

It can’t be anything good.

“What about Catra?” Adora says, voice sharp, and Lonnie’s eyes meet hers, a challenge and a dare wrapped into one quick look. Adora shifts, readying herself. “Tell me, Lonnie.”

Lonnie narrows her eyes. “The Adora I knew didn’t throw around commands outside of battle,” she says. Raises her brows. “Do you want to fight? Because I’m not here to fight. I don’t even want to be here.”

“You can’t blame me for being cautious,” Adora says, still tense.

“And you can’t blame me for hating you.” 

Adora closes her eyes to absorb the verbal punch. Takes a deep, focusing breath. “What,” she says, opening her eyes, “did I ever do to you?”

“You left,” Lonnie says, as if it’s that simple, as if everything that’s torn them all to pieces and built them back up again can be traced back to the moment she left the Horde.

And maybe it is that simple. Maybe everything is her fault. Maybe all she’ll ever amount to is an ever-growing list of _if I hadn’t done this, if I hadn’t done that, if I hadn’t –_

She sighs and lowers her guard, weariness tugging at her bones. “Truce?” she asks, looking at Lonnie.

“That’s what this has been since I got here,” Lonnie says, stuffing her hands in her pockets. It’s a fake-out, Adora knows. Lonnie’s got one hand wrapped around the hilt of the dagger strapped to her thigh that can be reached through the hole in her pocket, and the other hand wrapped around a flash grenade. Still, Adora relaxes minutely. She knows the girl, has known her all of their lives, and knows Lonnie won’t use them unless she’s forced to.  

“So, what’s this message Scorpia wants me to know?”

Lonnie gazes at her, her brown eyes glinting in the moonslight. There are bags under her eyes, deep ones, as if she hasn’t slept in days, and the slight bend to her shoulders make it look like she’s carrying too much weight despite the nearly empty-looking pack on her back. Adora’s fingers itch to take the weight, any of it, all of it. It’s her duty to make sure her team –

She mentally shakes herself. _Lonnie’s not your responsibility. Not anymore._

Still, her fingers twitch.

The pause drags on, and Adora raises a brow. This isn’t like Lonnie to beat around the bush, to hesitate, to sugarcoat. “Lonnie?” she asks, unable to hide the slight tremor in her voice. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Catra.”

Adora’s stomach drops to the ground, her heart in her throat. Lonnie’s voice is small – confident, unshakeable, fiery Lonnie. Lonnie who doesn’t hold punches, who doesn’t mince words, whose voice does _not_ tremble even in the most high-stakes situations.

And all at once it’s just Lonnie and Adora talking. Not Lonnie the Horde Soldier, not Adora the Princess – just them and all the memories between them, the food fights that always ended with them cleaning the kitchen, the afternoons that Lonnie spent teaching Adora how to code, the late nights where Adora helped Lonnie perfect her combat skills.

“What about her?” Adora asks, voice straining around the lump in her throat.

“She’s dead.”

“No, she’s not,” Adora says, voice like a whip.

Lonnie shakes her head. “She is, Adora. I saw it myself.”

“No she’s _not,_ Lonnie,” Adora says, her eyes stinging. “It’s just another trick, one that you aren’t in on. She’s probably just playing a prank." 

Lonnie’s gaze is so hard on her that Adora flinches. “She hasn’t played a prank since you left.”

Adora shakes her head. “You’re wrong. Why didn’t Scorpia come and tell me herself, huh? Aren’t she and Catra all buddy-buddy now? Why isn’t she here rubbing this in my face?”

“Because she thought you’d believe me,” Lonnie says. “We were friends once, after all.” _And you still trust me, just a little – you can’t help it_ goes unsaid but hangs like ice in the air between them.

Adora clenches her fists until her knuckles are white. “I don’t believe you,” she says, voice hard. Her body tenses up as adrenaline flows through her, and for a moment there’s nothing she wants more than to punch that cold look off of Lonnie’s face. “I want proof.”

Lonnie sighs. “Yeah, I thought you might,” she says, reaching behind her and shrugging off the pack. She digs through it for a moment and then pulls out a datachip. “Here,” she says, throwing it to Adora. “A copy of the surveillance footage from that night.”

Adora catches it, holding it in her palm like it’ll bite her. And maybe it will.

“That’s not the only thing on here, is it?” she asks.

Finally, Lonnie smirks. It’s small, a far cry from her normal assured self, but still. It’s something.

“You know me too well,” she says. “It’s nothing bad. Just,” she pauses, brows furrowing. Shrugs. “An option. It’s an option for you and your _new squad_.” The last bit is so full of venom that Adora steps back.

Lonnie eyes her. “See you around, Adora,” she says, slipping away into the Whispering Woods.

Adora lets her go.

The trip back to her room is lost to the urgency in her mind. She scrambles for her bed, reaching for the datapad she keeps in the nightstand, and slides the datachip into the pad with a soft _click._ The pad lights up, asking for a password for access, and Adora doesn’t hesitate. Types in her old Horde identification number with a sort of detachment she thought she left back in the Fright Zone. The screen blinks again, loading, and after a few moments two folders appear: one labeled ‘security footage’ and the other labeled ‘option.’ Adora huffs. _Blunt like a hammer, Lonnie._

She clicks the ‘security footage’ folder and it opens. There’s one file inside, only a minute long, and Adora clicks on it. The screen lights up, the footage grainy, and she doesn’t have to check the location stamp to know it’s side hallway F5 – she’d spent enough time there with Catra, learning the shortcuts throughout Hordak’s castle. The more escape routes the better.

Her finger moves without her say-so, hitting the pause button just a second in. She clenches her teeth, chest so tight she fears she might crack down the middle.

_I don’t want to look at this,_ she thinks, hands shaking. _If I look at this everything is going to change and everything’s always changing and –_

She’s tired of change. At least in the Horde, everything stayed the same. Not here in Bright Moon, though, not when she’s got the power of She-Ra floating through her veins.

She takes a deep breath, holding it in for a few seconds before letting it out in a rush. Straightens her shoulders. Whatever’s on this video it was important enough for Scorpia to reach out, for Lonnie to risk desertion.

She clicks ‘play,’ and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

The footage skips around a little bit, and there’s no sound, but there’s no mistaking Catra. Adora’s stomach falls through the floor and to Etheria’s core.

She soaks it in: Catra, slung over the mystery man’s shoulder. Catra’s head bouncing off of the bot’s metal hull without so much as a twitch to signal life. Catra loose-limbed and unmarked, being taken down side hallway F5 like trash.

Adora watches the video again. Again and again and again. Sees the tip of Scorpia’s stinger in the corner, sees the timestamp, sees and sees and sees and –

Focuses on Catra. Quiet, unconscious, limp Catra. Zooms in on her chest, watching, a litany of _please please please_ running through her mind.

Throughout the video, Catra’s chest doesn’t move. Her eyes don’t flutter from under her eyelids. Her tail doesn’t twitch.

Adora chucks the datapad across the room. Watches the screen shatter. Stands and makes her way towards the windows of her room, shoving them open, desperate for air. But the night is still, _just like Catra –_

Shakes her head. Catches her reflection in the full-body mirror Glimmer had hung up for her.

“I’d know,” she whispers, staring at her blank blue eyes, “if she were gone. I’d feel it, right?”

Her dream from days ago hits her like a punch in the gut. _“You can’t save everyone, Adora,”_ Catra had said, right before leaping.

The lump in her throat aches sharply as she swallows. Had it been a warning? _Another_ warning that she’d cast aside, thinking it driven by her own fears? How many times had those fears played out exactly as she thought they would? 

She gasps at the next thought: _Catra’s been dead for days and I didn’t know._

Her knees give out from under her and she collapses to the ground, unable to take her eyes from the mirror. She looks at her Horde uniform. Why is she wearing it, after everything? It’s battered, dirty, and hastily mended in many places. The white has long since faded into a yellowish cream, and the red isn’t vibrant any longer, reminding her more of dried blood than fresh.

She shivers. And maybe that was the point of the red being so bright – a warning as much as a promise. 

Something in her snaps and she stands so quickly she has to blink through a head rush, shaking fingers scrabbling at buttons. It needs to come off, it all needs to come off. She can’t wear their symbol anymore, can’t wear their colors. She grunts as she strips herself. The fabric burns, and whatever comfort she used to find in the familiar clothing is gone, long gone, twisted into disgust. She curls her lips at her jacket, her shirt, her pants, her belts, her boots. Removes every inch of the Horde from herself until she’s standing in nothing but her underwear, chest heaving, breath whistling through gritted teeth.

She looks at herself in the mirror, all muscle and scars, and catches a flash of red in her hair. Her hair tie, her last one from the Horde, the last one from her stash that she always kept on her. She rips it out with a growl, yanking harshly at it, ignoring the sound of breaking strands as she does so. Turns and flings the offending thing out of one of the windows. Then she reaches up and lets her bangs out of their bob.

Wild, glinting blue eyes meet hers in the mirror, and she doesn’t recognize herself. Doesn’t recognize the fury shaking her muscles, the snarl on her face, the tangled mess of her hair. She grits her teeth hard enough that her jaw creaks, forcing the scream that’s lodged in her throat to stay there.

If she screams, guards will come. She’ll have to explain, have to calm down, have to function. 

It’s not an option. This moment, this feeling, is for her and her alone.

Her hands clench around the Horde jacket, bunching the fabric together. With a quick, deft movement she surges forward, punching the mirror, watches as the glass breaks.

She can’t look at herself.

Turns away and heads for her desk, her knuckles white with the force of her grip on the jacket. She bows forward a bit with the pressure building in her chest, a sob bubbling up to her lips.

She refuses to let it out.

_Catra’s gone._

The thought threatens to shatter her. Her breath stutters, eyes burning, and she closes them, scrunching up her face. She can’t cry now. She will _not_ cry now. There’s too much to do. If she lets the hurt overwhelm her now, she may never resurface, because the fact that Catra is _dead_ will never not rip her to pieces.

A whine escapes, high and thready, and she slams her fists into the desk in front of her. The vibrations crawling up her arms is enough – she steadies her breathing, pushes those feelings down down _down_ until she’s nearly numb. She sucks in a deep, calming breath. Straightens out. Wipes her eyes, just in case. Swallows again and again until the lump in her throat dissipates.

Forces her fists to uncurl. Her Horde jacket is wrinkled, utterly so, and a flash of white-hot anger washes through her. _Good,_ she thinks viciously, grabbing the jacket with her other hand and giving it a hard jerk. The sound the fabric makes as it rips isn’t anything monumental, but something in Adora bares its teeth in vindictive pleasure.

Light Hope’s voice is a warning in the back of her head, telling her to let go, but she pushes it away. 

She can’t let this go. She will _never_ let this go.

Because Catra’s gone now, _dead_ because of the Horde, because of Hordak.

Adora grins sharply, something dangerous growing in her chest.

She’ll deal with the paralyzing ache in her chest later, when the Horde’s disbanded and burnt to the ground, when she’s plunged her sword deep into Hordak’s chest and watched the light drain from his eyes.

Adora takes a deep breath, holds it for a few seconds, then exhales. Walks over to the cracked datapad and picks it up, taking out the datachip as she walks back to her desk. Picks up one of the other datapads scattered around and plugs the datachip in, retypes her password, and clicks on the other folder.

There’s work to get done.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl adora and co. are hard to write for me? idk why but they are
> 
> (and don't worry despite how much i hate Shadow Weaver she will, in fact, be back bc i need her for more Plot)


	9. action and reaction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! shout out to my awesome beta reader patheticfrog aka the person who Keeps Me Sane At Work. retail's a bitch. i'll try and get back on my regular posting schedule but real life Be Like That sometimes so
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS: description of gore and vomiting (not graphic)
> 
> enjoy!

Catra rubs her hands, tingling fingers pressing deep into the muscle. She begins with the meat of her right thumb, massaging it until the tingling sensation goes away and it begins to feel normal again. Then her fingers. She spends a couple of minutes massaging the back of her hand and wrist, aching from the effort of having her claws unsheathed for such a long period of time.

Not that it’ll do any good. They always ache, always have, because how could she ever sheathe her claws? The Horde preached preparedness, preached always having a weapon ready, and what better weapon did she have than her own claws?

She shakes her right hand before massaging her left one. She’s never liked that tingling sensation – reminds her too much of the one time Lonnie had shoved her into an anthill. Adora had helped her groom herself afterward, had combed through her fur an inch at a time to make sure all the ants were gone. She’d massaged her hands and wrists too, in the beginning, when having her claws always unsheathed hurt so badly she could barely hold things.

But those days are long gone, and she’s gotten used to doing it herself.

Once done she wriggles her toes, massaging the tingles from her feet. Then she begins licking at the wounds on her forearms, still unwashed and not bandaged. She takes her time, pointedly ignoring Lyra’s eyes from across the fire.

_I did say she could hit me,_ she thinks, holding back a wince and she carefully picks bits of gravel and dirt from the scratches. The ones Lyra gave her aren’t deep, already beginning to scab. The ones the white magicat gave her, though – _N’la? N’lyra? N’yra? Good Horde what’s with all these similar sounding names? –_ are deep enough to be worrisome. One still bleeds sluggishly, and Catra screws her face up at the copper taste.

When she’s done she sighs and looks at Lyra. The magicat has barely moved from her spot, only doing so when the too-large rabbit needed tending to. Catra’s stomach grumbles at the smell of cooking meat but she ignores it.

“No trial, then?” she asks.

Lyra shakes her head. “You’re undeserving of one.”

Catra’s ear twitches. She’s heard that before. She doesn’t deserve food, doesn’t deserve praise, doesn’t deserve anything more than a casual glance. _Shadow Weaver would like you,_ she thinks, her thumb rubbing at the soft spot on her right wrist.

“Even the Horde would give me a trial,” she says. Even the Rebellion would. Both would be for show, her sentence decided long ago, but at least they’d still give her a chance to defend herself.

“I’m not the Horde,” Lyra says, her tail twitching.

“No, you’re not,” Catra says, voice trailing off. What are the rules here? She’s been playing by the only set of rules she knows, but what if those aren’t the rules Lyra’s playing by? Maybe a trial was never in the cards to begin with.

Or maybe it was. But it doesn’t matter, not when it’s just the two of them out here at this poor excuse of a camp. Even Kahi answered to Lyra. Whatever story Lyra’s going to tell after this, it’ll be believed. Especially if that story involves Catra making an escape attempt, fighting Lyra, and Lyra killing her because she won’t go down quietly.

It’s the story she would use if she were in Lyra’s position.

Catra’s chest clenches, a shiver of unease crawling up her spine. Lyra isn’t kidding. There’s no warmth in those amber eyes, no devious spark. Catra is alone with a warrior with more skill than her, more training, who she only tricked once because of sheer dumb luck. She’s alone, injured, deep in unknown territory, and cornered by an enemy who won’t hesitate to kill her – who seems to _want_ to kill her for some imagined slight.

She sucks in a sharp breath, tensing. Variables. Always so many variables out of her control. She can renounce the Horde, but when word of her doing so reaches Hordak, what will be the consequences? It’s not worth it – Lyra wouldn’t believe her anyway. The moment she’d seen the Horde’s symbol on Catra she’d made her decision.

The other option is to offer herself as an informant. Surely they could use up-to-date knowledge on the Horde from Hordak’s second hand? Catra shakes her head, still staring at Lyra. It wouldn’t work. Maybe Kahi would’ve been open to the idea, but Lyra is granite in front of her, physically and mentally, and Catra knows there’s no changing her mind.

_Okay,_ she thinks. _Tread carefully._

“Why am I a traitor?” she asks. “What are my charges?” 

“That’s unimportant.”

Catra rears back, spluttering. “Unimportant? You’re going to _kill me._ I think I deserve to know what I’m being put to death for.”

Lyra tenses, eyes flashing. “You don’t deserve to know.”

Catra scoffs, fur prickling. “Fine,” she says. “Then how do you know me? I can’t be a traitor to someone I don’t know, and I’ve never met you.”

Lyra hums. “You really don’t know, do you? Kahi was telling the truth, then.”

Catra’s ears twitch. She tries to play it cool. “Kahi?” she asks. “Where’d she end up?”

“That’s no concern of yours.”

Catra shrugs. Lyra’s probably right – caring is what got her into all of this in the first place. Kahi’s fate doesn’t matter, not really. But she doesn’t like being in people’s debt either, and she definitely owes Kahi a favor. Maybe two.

“Just curious,” Catra says. It’d be a shame for a potential ally to disappear. “She saved my life. Can’t help but want to know what happened after you showed up.”

Lyra stares at her. “Kahi’s been taken care of.”

Catra squints, taking a breath to steady the skip of her heart. Dead, then. A spark of anger nearly causes her lips to curl upward, but she stops herself. _How can you speak so calmly about it?_ she thinks. Just the thought of reporting Lonnie, Rogelio, or Kyle for something and having them end up dead because of it makes her want to puke. She swallows, forcing nausea away.

_Then again,_ she thinks. Different rules. Maybe Kahi isn’t dead. Maybe that phrase means something different here than it does in the Horde. She can’t be sure without seeing a body. Which means she might still have an ally out there, willing to bend the rules for her a bit.

The thought settles her. For all of her bluster, this is the first time she’s gone solo. Especially for a mission this important. Knowing that there’s at least one other person out there who might have her back is, well. Not bad.

“You and Kahi keep telling me I don’t remember. What exactly am I supposed to be remembering?”

Lyra shakes her head. “It’s better this way. Easier.”

“For you,” Catra asks, “or for me?”

Lyra frowns, ducking her head, taking her eyes off of Catra for the first time in what feels like hours. She reaches out to turn the spit, then reaches to the side and pulls a length of cloth from her bag. Catra stares at it – _How did I miss that? –_ as Lyra spreads it out. With practiced movements, she takes the meat from the spit and puts it on the cloth to cool.

The silence stretches. Catra swivels her ears, listening for any hint of the other magicats, but hears nothing out of the ordinary. The sun rises further, warming her, and she wonders how tired she really must be if she has to push away the urge to doze now, of all times.

But the past week or so – she’s lost count of the days, hadn’t really been trying to keep track – has been far more stressful than she ever thought it would be. She should be back in the Horde, ruining the Princess’ plans.

“For both of us,” Lyra says, throwing her a few pieces of meat.

Catra lets the meat fall to the ground. She can’t eat, not with the way her stomach is twisting. “I’m going to need you to explain that.”

Lyra glares at her. “Be silent.”

Catra hears an echo of Shadow Weaver in those words and can’t help the way her lips curl up in a half-snarl. She can’t escape it, can she? Being told what to do, what she can’t do, how she needs to behave. Someone’s always telling her how worthless she is, how burdensome, how she’s only kept around because _Adora’s grown fond of you, you stinking creature._

She’s always been told what to do. Always been commanded, directed, ordered.

Catra’s fur fluffs, her chin jutting out.  “No,” she spits.

Lyra’s voice is granite. “Be silent and eat.”

_You need to play this smart,_ she thinks, even as she opens her mouth to speak. “No.”

Silence settles around them, broken only by the crackling fire and the birds in the trees. Catra draws in a deep breath, scenting the air. There’s no backup for either of them. No witnesses, no jury of peers. Just the two of them and their decisions.

A plan forms in Catra’s mind, barely coherent and just this side of too reckless, but what’s she got to lose?

Catra stands, tail lashing. “You’re hesitating,” she says, eyeing Lyra. “If you were going to kill me you would have already. What’s the point of this charade? Are you waiting for permission?”

Lyra looks at her, face impassive but eyes bright. She doesn’t say anything and Catra grins.

“You are,” she says, unable to keep the mirth from her voice. “Oh, that’s so sweet. Your leader,” she snaps her fingers, trying to remember, “Sati, right? She forbade you to kill me,” she says, grin widening. “I bet you’re waiting for me to escape, right? So you have your excuse.”

Lyra’s all harsh lines and tense eyes, calico fur beginning to fluff up on her shoulders. “Be silent.”

Catra _tsks._ “You’re all talk, you know that? You send Caton and N’yra away so you can kill me, and now you can’t even get up the nerve to do it. _Pathetic._ ”

Lyra growls, a rumbling thing from deep in her chest that Catra can feel from across the fire. Her skin prickles with warning. There’s a voice in her head that sounds a lot like Scorpia’s telling her to knock it off, but she ignores it.

“Is this the kind of hesitation you have on the battlefield?” Catra asks, preparing to jump back. “No wonder you got people killed.” 

A beat. The snap of Lyra’s self-control is nearly audible.

Catra dodges Lyra’s attack by the skin of her teeth, leaping back. Lyra follows a half-second behind, all whirling motion and snarling words.

“You don’t know anything,” she hisses, sliding behind Catra before she can blink, forcing her into a headlock.

Catra gasps, trying to fight down the panic rising in her veins. She freezes. Licks her lips. “What don’t I know?” she asks, digging her claws into Lyra’s forearm to try and relieve the pressure.

“We were fine,” Lyra spits. “They’d abandoned us here, left us here to die, but we overcame every obstacle. We’re not surviving anymore, we’re  thriving, and all you’ll do is disrupt the peace.”

Catra’s tail lashes hard against the ground, her body trembling with the effort to keep still. “How will I do that?”

“By virtue of who you are,” Lyra snarls, tightening her grip. Catra chokes, scratching at Lyra’s arm. “I won’t let them go back to the mainland, not when we’re safe here,” she says, voice taking on a fevered edge. “We fought that battle once and lost. I won’t let anyone else die.”

Black stars begin appearing in Catra’s vision. She flails, bringing her foot up and slamming it as hard as she can into Lyra’s wrapped ankle. Lyra yells, flinching back, grip loosening just enough for Catra to whirl around and drag her claws over Lyra’s ribcage, hands slick with blood in a matter of seconds.

Lyra snarls, stumbling backward, giving Catra enough room to slam her knee into her nose. Catra grins at the snap of broken cartilage. She grabs a handful of Lyra’s hair and drags the dazed magicat off of the ground, pinning her to a nearby tree. 

“Thanks for keeping to the script,” Catra says, plucking a small rock from the ground and whipping it across Lyra’s face.

The magicat falls to the ground and Catra pants, hands trembling. She can feel the blood soaking through to her skin and the sensation makes her shiver. Her tail lashes, occasionally slapping her in the leg. She keeps her gaze on the tree, bile rising in her throat. For all the things she’s done, there are lines she still hasn’t crossed, lines she desperately doesn’t _want_ to cross.

_Don’t be dead,_ she thinks, again and again, her eyes beginning to sting. _Please, please, please don’t be dead._

She turns. Can’t make herself look. If she doesn’t look then she’ll never know for sure. Goes to step away but pauses before she finishes shifting her weight.

Somewhere in the folds of Lyra’s tunics is her mask.

_Leave it,_ she mentally hisses. She doesn’t need it. It’s just a stupid piece of metal Adora gave her a long time ago. It doesn’t mean anything.

But she wants it.

Her face screws up and she shakes her head even as she turns back around. Gazes up at the sky as she crouches, hands gripping her knees. She takes a deep breath and nearly gags at the stench of fresh blood. Her heart beats hard against her chest, her ears ringing. She bites her lip and looks.

Lyra’s nose is crooked, blood soaking into the white fur around it. There’s more blood, so much blood, too much blood, soaking into the orange fur at the top of her head, into her reddish hair, and Catra’s stomach lurches. She bites her lip harder. Lays trembling hands onto Lyra’s chest and waits for –

Lyra’s chest moves up and down and Catra pitches forward onto her knees, heaving out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

“Oh, thank the Horde,” she breathes, blinking away tears. Relief pools in her chest, cold but comforting. Lyra’s alive. Bleeding and damaged, but alive.

Her ears twitch. Rustling in the trees, faint but growing louder. Caton and N’yra, hopefully. She moves quickly, grabbing her mask from where Lyra had stashed it and placing it back onto her head. Goes to the fire and grabs the cooked meat, shoving it into Lyra’s bag, and slings it across her shoulders.

She takes off in the opposite direction, her body moving without her say-so, gaining speed until she’s flat out sprinting through the forest. She uses her momentum to fling herself over fallen trees, uncaring of the scratches she accumulates. Tries to keep quiet but her ears are ringing, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that leave her dizzy.

She doesn’t know how long she runs until she’s forced to stop for lack of air. An annoying, high-pitched whine gets stuck in her ears and it takes her a few seconds to realize it’s coming from her. Realizes it's not sweat on her cheeks but tears. Her breath stutters and she presses her hands to her mouth to stifle the noise, only to rear back when she tastes blood. 

Her right hand is still soaked with Lyra’s blood, the fur flattened to her skin with the amount of it. Small bits of flesh are caught under her claws.

Catra gags, pukes, and falls to her knees, shaking. Sucks in a breath and nearly pukes again. A scream creeps from her gut to her throat and even as her stomach twists she presses her hands hard against her mouth, hard enough to bruise. She can’t scream, not here, not now. The magicats might be in hearing range. The boars might be in hearing range.

So she swallows the scream, the taste of bile and blood heavy on her tongue. She’s still got her mission. Complete the mission and she’ll be able to go home and she’ll never have to think about this again, never have to fight anybody agai–

_The only thing waiting for you is a war._

The thought punches the air from her lungs and she staggers back into a tree, sliding down the trunk, ignoring the roughness of the bark. Curls up into herself, wrapping her tail around her legs and ducking her head between her knees and her chest. Lays her ears flat against her head but it’s not enough, she’s not small enough, can’t get away from –

Her claws sinking into She-Ra’s back. Her scream. Blood welling up from the scratches. Vicious pleasure at hurting She-Ra, the person who stole Adora from her. An eye for an eye. She-Ra hurt her, so why can’t she hurt her back? That’s the way it goes, right? Hit for hit. Wound for wound. Keep on hurting until the tally evens out.

“Stop it,” she whispers, pressing the palms of her hands to her temples to try and rid herself of the image of Adora, bloodied and unconscious, half-dead because of her.

“No,” she says, standing, blinking black spots from her vision. Water. She needs water, needs to clean herself up. Wash it all away and focus. She moves forward, unsteady steps growing more certain as the panic begins to unfurl behind her heart, driving her on and on and on until she’s running again, breathless, tears blurring her vision.

Because this isn’t – it’s not – the goal isn’t to _kill_ Adora. Or anybody. Hordak wants control, wants peace – that doesn’t include killing.

Shadow Weaver’s voice, familiar and oily, slithers through her mind: _I didn’t think you were as naïve as Adora._ A branch scratches her cheek but she ignores it. Pushes herself faster, muscles burning, lungs aching. _He tried to kill you, Catra._

She trips, Shadow Weaver’s voice breaking her rhythm, and crashes to the ground, sliding a bit across the leaf-litter and mud. She stays down, eyes wide, and tries to get control of her breathing, of the frantic pace of her heart.

“He wasn’t going to kill me,” she gasps. He was teaching her a lesson. She’d disobeyed him and lied to his face. He was evening the scoreboard. Everyone knows Hordak despises lying as much as he despises the Rebellion. The punishment fit the crime.

She closes her eyes. Gathers all of her wild thoughts in a move perfected by years of doing it and shoves them deep down into herself, into the farthest corner of her mind, into the blackest trench hole she can muster up. The same hole she chucks the memories of Shadow Weaver’s punishments into.

Her breathing calms, slowly but surely, her heartbeat steadying as a wave of fuzzy numbness washes over her. It’s soft and warm, reminding her of her favorite blue blanket, and she sighs. Opens her eyes. Pulls herself off of the ground as she adds another mental wall in her mind, blocking out any traitorous thoughts.

It doesn’t matter what she wants. She’s got a mission to complete.  

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ngl this chapter didnt go AT ALL the way i planned it. catra and lyra both really just. took the fuckign reigns. literally i'm the one who fucking wrote the thing and I'M fuckin shook.


	10. against the current

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! as ever, a shoutout to my beta reader patheticfrog ilu
> 
> grad school is starting soon so my updating schedule is about to get super irregular until i get into the swing of things. don't worry though, i'm still gonna keep chugging. i'm abandoning this story over my cold dead body
> 
> no special trigger warning for this chapter
> 
> enjoy!

Finding water is easy. Streams and small, trickling brooks crisscross the forest, merging in on one another until becoming a river again. Catra doesn’t think it’s the same river from before – it’s narrower, deeper, the water moving quickly but not enough to form rapids. If pressed she could swim across it. There’s not much of a shore, tree roots jutting from the muddy banks, the trees themselves reaching across the water to brush up against each other.

She picks her way down the shore, following the current upstream. She hasn’t stopped to wash herself yet, hasn’t bothered to clean her wounds. There’ll be time for that later, once she’s put enough distance between herself and the magicat’s satellite camp. As she walks she keeps her ears lax, letting them twitch and swivel how they want, keeping them focused on the rhythm of the trees above her. Between the swaying and the dappling sunlight, its easier to keep her eyes focused ahead of her, searching for other threats.

Catra forces her mind to go blank and stay blank. Concentrates on the world around her, the buzzing of insects, the burn of her muscles, the game trails that weave through the undergrowth and end at the banks of the river. Scents too: the wet earth, the freshwater, the warm fear-spiked scent of prey when she gets too close and they bolt away. From the corner of her eye she spots something silver dart through the water and whips her head around to track it. Tenses, bares her teeth, poised to strike when –

_A fish,_ she thinks, letting out a breath. Not a bot. _Do the magicats even have the tech for bots?_ If they did, surely they would have already deployed them. She watches the fish pluck a bug from the surface of the water and disappear into the depths, her tail twitching. A large fish. Something she could sink her teeth into and enjoy, so unlike those little minnows from the last river. Her stomach grumbles and she ignores it. Keeps walking.

If they don’t have the tech for bots, what else don’t they have? Lyra’d said that they’d been abandoned here – it wasn’t planned. They couldn’t pack. Hordak had probably rounded them all up the moment he could and sent them here, to Be-

She shakes her head. _No, it doesn’t matter,_ she thinks. However they got here, it’s not important to the mission. She doesn’t need context, she needs results.

Her muscles ache with the tension they carry but she can’t let it go. Even her ears are hurting from the strain, and a headache begins forming behind her right eye, reaching up into her ears. She groans under her breath, pressing her knuckles deep into her temples in an attempt to stave it off. If anything, though, it worsens, thudding in tune with her pulse. The glittering river water makes it worse and she squints, focusing on the foliage around her.

What little riverbank there is slowly morphs into steep drops, forcing her to walk through the forest undergrowth. She doesn’t stray too far from the river. Keeps close enough to it that twice the ground gives out from under her, almost sending her into the water. After a while, though, the river widens, shallows, and she crosses, the water reaching midway up her shins. The banks quickly steepen again, reminding her of the cliffs from the beach she was dropped off on.

As the sun begins to dip low on the horizon, she veers off her path, following a small game trail. She’ll need shelter soon, an actual shelter this time around, something defensible and hidden, a place where one of the magicats could see from the treetops and not think anything amiss.

Bedding in the trees is out of the question. Part of her feels like she shouldn’t even touch the trees anymore, as if they’re all connected and her touching one could cause ripples that would call attention to her. Like a pebble’s wake in a puddle. Or a fly in a spiderweb.

The game trail snakes through the undergrowth, almost completely disappearing in places. Catra keeps her ears peeled as she eyes the winding path, looking for any sign of recent activity. It looks as if it was once heavily used – she can just make out the borders of the path where the beaten shrubs and grasses haven’t fully grown back. The long grass that obscures most of the path is nearly at its full height as well – another few weeks and the trail will utterly disappear, blending back into the forest as if it had never been. 

Part of her wishes she could disappear too. Fade into the background and never be heard from again. No one to look after, no one to report to, no one to tell her what to do. She’d thought about it a lot when she was younger – sneaking out and running away, going where the Horde would never find her. Adora was always by her side in those daydreams, always helping her figure out the next play, always watching her back.

_And now she’s gone and left me behind,_ she thinks, ducking below a half-fallen tree. That old ache rears its ugly head again, squeezing her heart. She doesn’t understand, doesn’t get how Adora could leave her like that. As if she was nothing more than a bad memory. She never even tried to come back to say goodbye. Catra’d had to go out and find her herself, on Shadow Weaver’s orders no less.

_She knows what happens when I can’t deliver for Shadow Weaver,_ she thinks, skirting around a thorn bush. _Did she even care?_

Catra’s eyes sting, weariness tugging at her bones. Maybe she’ll let it drag her to the ground, through the mud and the muck until she sinks deep into Etheria’s core. Knowing her luck it would be cold, but she doesn’t think she’d fight it, not this time – just let it settle into her, let it cool the rage in her heart and make a home in her body.

_I only ever wanted –_

But that’s the problem: she _wanted._ If she hadn’t wanted maybe none of this would have happened. If she had let her ambitions whither away, if she had followed the rules, played the game, maybe none of this would have happened. 

Her lips curl up into a soundless snarl. It’s not her fault, not really. She’d been playing – _is_ playing – the game as best as she knows how. Adora, though. Adora had gone off script. Adora had found the sword. Adora had abandoned her. If Adora had stayed in the Horde like a good little soldier everything would be okay. They’d be fine. They’d be eating ration bars and sparring and planning attacks and she wouldn’t be stuck in this stupid forest.

Mostly, though, they’d be together.

_She’d promised._

Catra sniffs. Swallows around the growing lump in her throat. Blinks a few times. Breathes. Focuses on the path, careful not to lose it. There’s no use for these thoughts right now. She’s got bigger things to worry about, for once, than the Princesses.

The path leads her to a den, and lost in thought as she is, she doesn’t recognize it for one until the smell hits her – animal and musty and _soft_ in a way that puts her on edge. There’s a split second thought, all intuition, of _there are babies here and I’m going to get mauled_ that has her leaping back, claws at the ready.

Nothing happens. 

Muscle by muscle, she relaxes. Sees two large boulders tucked into a hill, the stones dark and weathered. A pile of smaller stones leads up to the entrance. Moss blankets the rocks, green and vibrant, along with a flaky looking thing that Catra vaguely remembers is some kind of plant, but she can’t remember what. The opening of the den is mostly hidden some sort of thick, leafy plant whose roots are imbedded into the rocks’ fissures, snaking across the surface like a vein.

Catra takes a deep breath, scenting. Nothing about it smells fresh – just whiffs of dank air and the stale scent of animal. She steps closer, climbing up the smaller rocks and pushing the leafy plant away. The opening is just large enough for her to squeeze through if she ducks her head, and there’s a long ray of sunlight sneaking in through a crack in the ceiling where the two stones haven’t quite locked together.  

Dust motes float in the golden beam of light and Catra sniffs again, long and deep. Animal fur, dead plants, stale air. Nothing fresh. Places a hand on the cool, rough stone as she makes her way into the seemingly abandoned den, her eyes adjusting quickly to the semidarkness. Dried leaves and twigs crumble beneath her feet, poking at her. There’s stray animal hair all around but she can’t place what it could belong to. There are scratch marks on the walls too, about halfway up, and she traces the grooves with her own claws. 

The tunnel isn’t long, two skiff-lengths at most. She reaches a dead end but her hand on the wall keeps going, disappearing behind a protruding stone. Relief spills across her shoulders, trickling down her weary body and pooling at her aching feet. She wants this to be a good hiding spot. Wants this to be easy. Wants to be handed something on a silver plate and allowed to take it.

The opening to the next section of the tunnel will be a bit of a squeeze. Before she enters, though, she closes her eyes and listens hard. An ever-present ring in her ears is the only thing she picks up. She breathes deeply again, trying to parse the scents. There’s nothing to indicate life.

_It’ll do,_ she thinks, turning and walking out of the tunnel. She sets Lyra’s pack just inside the entrance of the den and begins searching for kindling. She’s not bedding down, not yet, not until she knows just how far the cave goes.

The torch isn’t anything fancy – in fact, it’s barely even decent. She’ll be lucky to get fifteen minutes of burn time out of it before the fire begins burning her hand, but it’ll do for the moment. She reenters the den, walking quickly through the tunnel and wedging herself between the protruding stone and the main wall. Whatever is hiding in the darkness, at least it won’t be a boar or a bear.

Once through she blinks, her brain trying to process even as she immediately backpedals, her heart in her throat. A bed, a fire, pots – someone’s home. She needs to leave, needs to get out of here _right now_ before they come back because she doesn’t know if she’s up for another fight, doesn’t know if she can handle being choked again or if she can play the word games or if –

The torchlight flickers and the details begin to sink in. The fire is old, only the barest of remnants remaining to signal its existence. The pots are broken, shattered, as if someone had thrown them at the wall in a fit of pique. The bed, a natural shelf in one of the rock walls, sports nothing but a blanket.

Her fur begins to lie flat again as she takes it in. Her nose wasn’t lying – this place is abandoned, hasn’t seen anybody other than her in awhile. The room itself is small, comfortable. Three strides forward and she’d reach the wall in front of her. It’s wider than it is long.

“Okay,” she whispers, not wanting to shatter the silence, “this’ll do.” 

She exits the room and stands, letting the warmth of the torch seep into her fur. The chill is a constant thing, and if it gets too much colder she’ll have to make herself a jacket. She shakes her head – she’s not going to be here for that long. A couple more weeks, maybe, long enough for Scorpia to really miss her and for Hordak to see just how valuable she is in the long run. By now they’ve probably tried to plan another attack. Scorpia would ask everybody their opinions; Lonnie would throw out a few good ideas but wouldn’t be able to string them together; Rogelio would shrug and go along with whatever plan is offered; Kyle would suggest something so stupid Catra’d have to force herself not to bang her head on the table.

The thought of a typical planning session makes her chest warm, makes her ache, makes her eyes sting.

She shakes her head – later, later. Right now she needs to make sure the magicats won’t find her. She exits the den, putting out the torch as she does so, and begins gathering materials for a bed. It’s mindless work but she forces herself to pay attention, going so far as to count her steps so that her thoughts don’t wander. 

Gathering the bedding takes longer than the other few times she’s done this. She goes out of her way to not pick anything too close to the den and tries to make the damage she’s doing seem natural, as if the limbs were blown away in a storm. She’ll thank herself later when she’s not fighting off sleep and running off of residual adrenaline. The den, such as it is, is a good campsite. Though there’s only one way in and out, it’s easily camouflaged, close to the river, and already fortified. She hasn’t seen anything yet that would suggest the magicats have the sort of weaponry that can cut through rocks, and the tunnel is too narrow for the boars and bears. There’s other wildlife out there, she’s sure of it, that would love to take a bite out of her, but until she encounters them she isn’t going to worry.

Once she has an armful of leafy branches she makes her way back to the den, pausing at the entrance. Part of her doesn’t want to disturb the room. It seems wrong, somehow, to disrupt the space. Maybe it’s because nothing in the space seemed shared, at first glance. In the Horde she’s always sharing space, sharing blankets, sharing beds, sharing whatever there is to share. Even the showers are communal. She still hasn’t gotten used to having her own room as Force Captain, and she often finds herself missing Adora’s calm, deep breathing pattern as she slept. It was nice, having a sound to ease her into sleep.

Now, though, it’s quiet. Both in her Force Captain room and in the den. Her tail twitches. She’ll have to use the room. If she starts a fire in the tunnel it might be seen through the entrance, even with that big leafy plant blocking most of the way. Better safe than sorry at this point. She goes into the black room and drags the branches behind her, grunting when the bundle gets caught between the protruding rock and the main wall. Once done she takes a minute to let her eyes adjust – a thin sliver of light pierces the room from a crack in the ceiling, so in contrast to the darkness around it that it seems almost tangible.

As her eyes adjust, she begins to notice markings on the walls. She steps around the fire pit, careful to avoid errant shards of pottery, and squints at the markings. They cover the walls, black lines nearly indistinguishable from the rock they were drawn on. No words that she can make out, just a tangle of circles, lines, triangles, and other shapes all woven together.

Lifting a hand, she presses her fingertips into the markings. They’re warm under her touch and her skin prickles with awareness, the fur on her forearms beginning to stand on end. A tingling sensation softly washes through her and she yanks her hand away, a hiss caught in the back of her throat.

_Won’t be touching those anytime soon,_ she thinks. Tells her body to move but it doesn’t. There’s something about the markings, something strangely familiar. She’s seen at least a couple of them before somewhere, or something like them, but she can’t put her finger on where.

They look, vaguely, like a disastrous mix of First Ones writing and the sigils Shadow Weaver would draw in Catra’s early days with the Horde. She traces the lines with her gaze, following them from the wall to the floor to the ceiling and back to the wall. There isn’t a single line that isn’t connected. They crisscross all around the room except for the natural shelf where the bed goes. That area of rock in remarkably undisturbed.

Catra shrugs. Another problem for another time. She goes over to the shelf in the wall and pulls away the threadbare blanket, throwing it in the direction of the broken pottery, and begins stacking her bedding onto the shelf. She repeats the gathering process on a lesser scale, creating a decoy bed in the tunnel near the supposed dead end. If anyone does wander in hopefully they’ll see the decoy bed, assume she’s moved on, and leave.

Then she gathers materials for a fire, collecting already broken sticks or easily broken branches. Without an axe it’s the best she can do. As the sun begins to dip beneath the horizon she lugs her materials into the den, through the tunnel, and into the room. Makes the fire. Sits down, ready to rest, and remembers Lyra’s pack. Fetches it from the entryway and double-checks that the big leafy plant is obscuring the den’s entrance before retreating to the room for the night.

She sits. Takes a stick and pokes at the fire. Lets the warmth seep deep into her bones. Wants it to wrap around her and never let go. She wants – she wants –

She wants Scorpia. Wants to be wrapped up in one of her too-tight hugs if only to stop feeling like she’s going to crawl out of her skin.

But Scorpia isn’t here, so she scoots closer to the fire, close enough that the heat prickles her skin. Has an image of herself plunging her hand into it and letting it burn her up, letting it cleanse her, letting it consume her. 

She shakes her head. Grabs Lyra’s pack, rummages around for the wrapped meat, and begins nibbling on it. It’s cold and somewhat congealed, but tastes no worse than the ration bars she’s used to. She’ll miss the freshness of it when she gets back to the Fright Zone. She goes to lick her hand and freezes.

She still hasn’t washed Lyra’s blood from her fur.

She sucks in a sharp breath, registering the sandpaper feel of her tongue in her mouth and the worsening of her headache for the first time in, well. How long has it been since she had something to drink? She can’t remember. Everything is fuzzy, even her muscles, and she sighs. Dehydration. Just what she wanted.

The fur on her hand has hardened in some places, making the skin itch. Her stomach tightens, rolls, and she swallows hard so that nothing comes back up. She keeps sitting, staring at her hand. It’s not a long way to the river but it’ll be slow-going in the dark with the unfamiliar terrain, and there’s the possibility that she’ll get turned around and get lost.

She’s so, _so_ thirsty, and the dryness of her mouth wrestles with the weariness pulling at her limbs for a few moments before she sighs again. She’s going to have to risk it. If she falls asleep now she’ll be in an even worse state when she wakes.

_You spent all day by a river,_ she thinks, _and not once did you think to take a sip. Idiot. No wonder you’re here._

Her tail lashes lazily, knocking into Lyra’s bag, and she grabs it. Rummages around again until her hand hits metal and she pulls it out, the liquid in it swishing.

_So they do have metal,_ she thinks, unscrewing the cap and sniffing. Definitely water. She chugs it. If this is some trap of Lyra’s then she’s fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. At least she’ll be alone, though, and no one will find her body. She’ll have faded away, have run somewhere where not even the Horde and the Princesses can find her.

Gasping, she drains the bottle, the water tasting too good to waste on her dirty hand. Has a quick flash of regret – there are wounds she still needs to take care of, needs to wash and bandage. She’ll take care of that tomorrow – she’ll take care of everything tomorrow. For now, though, all she wants to do is sleep. She moves in a daze, dropping the bottle and curling up into her makeshift bed. She shivers, has the brief thought of moving the bed closer to the fire, but shoves the idea away. The last thing she needs is her bed catching, especially with her in it. 

Sleep doesn’t take her without a fight. Her dreams are hazy things, filled with hands-on her throat and flowing white-gold hair. The third time she wakes shaking and gasping, clawing at an unseen enemy, she stays awake. The fire’s gone out and her body clock tells her it’s far too early to be up. She dozes to pass the time, her thoughts a lazy current. 

Magicats. Other magicats. A sense of awe rolls over her and she shivers with it. Too much had happened in the past however many days for her to really focus on it, but now it sinks in, this giddy feeling. Tinged as it is with disappointment, Catra can’t help the smile that slips onto her face. As quickly as it appears, though, it disappears, a frown replacing it.

No one had ever outrightly told her she was the last magicat. She’d never seen another magicat in the Fright Zone, though, and had assumed that she was. She’d asked Shadow Weaver once, when she was younger, why she was the only magicat in the Horde. The witch had given her a look that chilled her to the bone and said, “You’re a tool, nothing more.” 

After that she never gave her past much thought. But now? Proof she isn’t alone, that she isn’t the last magicat – proof that, well.

She shakes herself, fully awake but not wanting to leave the warmth of her bed. Proof of what? That she’d had a family and they’d given her to the Horde? Because that’s what the adults always said when the kids asked: _You were given to us to promote the cause of the Horde._

The youngest cadets – the babies, the toddlers – are kept in a different area of the Fright Zone than the older cadets. There’s a small ceremony every year to introduce the newly-turned five-year-olds to the Horde. The expectation is that the older cadets will make sure the new ones don’t completely screw everything up, offer a hand when needed, but for the most part they’re left alone. They have overseers, like Octavia, to make sure they don’t die or starve or something, but other than that they’re treated like every other cadet.

Adora had never done that. She’d always been Shadow Weaver’s protégé. Catra hadn’t either, but she’d come to the Horde late – she was almost six by the time she found herself in the walls of the Fright Zone, scared and cold, unable to remember how she got there. Adora had taken a liking to her, had bargained with Shadow Weaver to keep her around, and the rest is history.

Rogelio, Lonnie, and Kyle, though, had gone through the regular route. They never mentioned their time in that younger cadet building, though, and it wasn’t something that was asked about. Kyle liked the younger kids, and there’d be times where a small group of them would follow him around as he went about his day, asking questions and getting into trouble.

But it was different for them. There were other humans, other lizard-folk that they could emulate. There were never any other magicats. Catra’d always been the odd one out for that. 

She claws at the bed, ripping apart the leaves as she thinks. It doesn’t matter that she’s not alone. They still gave her up. They still _abandoned_ her. The thought makes her growl. Even from the start she never had a chance. Even her own people didn’t want her. There’s no great mystery involved, no years-dormant loyalty she needs to give these people. Just anger.

“Catra?”

For a moment all she can think is _Adora?_ before reality catches up with her. She’s on her feet before she can blink, fur bristling, teeth bared. Silently, she steps to the entrance of the room, peering out of the shadows.

It’s morning. Light washes through the tunnel thanks to the broken ceiling, illuminating the darkness. The magicat looks frazzled, tail lashing furiously, ears and nose twitching. Green eyes flash and Catra feels the fear in her chest begin to melt.

Kahi.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bold of y'all to assume i was done w writing chapters that are mostly introspection
> 
> @ all of the ppl who comment - y'all literally make my day swear up


	11. lurch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! as ever, shout out to patheticfrog for betaing
> 
> like i said earlier, real life is catching up quick now that summer is over - i've got job, internship, and grad school, so my updating schedule isn't gonna be as on point as it was. never fear though, this story will get written!
> 
> enjoy!

_Leave me alone,_ Catra thinks, shrinking back into the darkness, her ears tight against her head. _Go away and leave me alone._

But Kahi doesn’t. Instead they crouch, pressing a hand into the decoy bed, and take a deep breath. Their ears twitch and swivel, and Catra freezes, her pulse in her ears.

Kahi huffs. “Smart,” they say, voice soft as they stand.

Dread turns Catra’s stomach as Kahi steps over the bed and places their hand on the wall.

_Please,_ Catra thinks. _Just once, universe. Work with me. Please._

“I know you’re here,” Kahi says.

Catra flexes her hands a few times to get rid of the lingering stiffness, heart pounding hard against her chest. There’s no way out – she’s trapped, ensconced in the flimsy light of this abandoned room with nothing but her claws for protection, still caked in dried blood. Before she can stop herself she lets out a hiss, a rasping thing that grates against the back of her throat.

Kahi stands their ground. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Catra’s lips curl away from her teeth, her hiss morphing into a growl. She’s heard that before, said that before, and not once have those words ever been true.

“Oh little one,” Kahi says, their voice soft. “It’s alright.”

Something inside Catra snaps and she lurches forward, slipping between the protruding stone and the wall, hurling herself at Kahi. The other magicat dodges the wild blow, leaping back, their tail lashing. Catra doesn’t stop, _can’t_ stop, and forces Kahi back again, again, not caring if her blows land or not. She wants them out, wants the intruder _out,_ because she’s had enough of people coming into her space and taking, always taking, never asking for permission.

She doesn’t realize she’s yelling until Kahi’s stumbling backward out of the den and scrambling down the makeshift stairs. “Go away,” she hisses, breathing heavily. Her head pounds, vision swimming, but she stands her ground, one hand gripping the cool stone and the other tense and waiting.

Kahi picks themselves up off the ground in slow, smooth motions. Their eyes dart up and down and Catra feels the assessment like claws against her skin and growls harder, taking a step forward.

They raise their hands. “I won’t hurt you.”

Catra doesn’t bother answering. Instead she glares at Kahi, lips curled over her teeth, and hisses.

“Okay,” Kahi says, beginning to back away. “I’m not going to come any closer, okay?”

With every step Kahi takes Catra feels something in her chest loosen. Feels the tense line of her shoulders begin to ease, the sharp curl of her lips soften. She takes a couple of steps back, slipping behind the large leafy plant that protects the den’s entrance, and peers between its leaves, watching as Kahi disappears into the undergrowth.

She stays there for a long while, listening, waiting, watching as the sun fully rises. Birds flit between the trees and twice she sees those too-large rabbits dart across the path leading up to her den. She won’t go hungry, at least.

The spot on her right wrist pulses and she digs her claws into it until she almost draws blood. She rubs at it, her stomach grumbling, her mouth dry. She needs to go to the river. Needs to wash off Lyra’s blood, needs to clean her wounds, needs to do something with her hands before she ends up scratching herself to pieces.

She returns to the abandoned room, grabbing some of the leftover meat and screwing up her face in disgust when the top layer sloughs off. Rotten. She sighs, wraps it in some cloth, and takes it with her. There’s a moment of hesitation at the entrance of the den but she continues forward, ears alert.

She follows the path, retracing her steps from the night before. Every little while she pauses and glances up, waiting for the telltale rustle of magicats above her, but the rhythm of the swaying trees never alters. Slowly her fur begins to lie flat and her hands relax from their semi-curled position.

It doesn’t take her long to reach the river, and even less time to bury the rancid meat at the base of one of the trees. The banks here are high, acting as miniature cliffs, but her path winds between a break in the walls and leads to a small sandy beach just big enough for her to lay down on if she wanted to.

She crouches, goes to cup her hands to drink but then thinks better of it. A quick glance around tells her she’s alone and she lowers her head to the water, drinking until her stomach sloshes. Then she dips her hands into the cold water and scrubs them, grabbing a handful of sand and working it into her fur. She scrubs until the sand irritates, until the water takes on a feeble red tint, the blood dispersing into the current. Then she scrubs more, just in case, until she feels as if she’ll make herself bleed. She lets her hands rest in the water, her fur waving with the current.

She lets her mind go blank, lets the static in her head flow through her veins until it’s all she can feel. Distantly she watches fish come up to her hands and investigate, but she doesn’t so much as twitch. Feels the wind pick up enough to reach the ground and ruffle her fur, making her shiver, but she can’t bring herself to care. Her hands get cold, colder, tingle, and go numb, feeling more like deadweights attached to her than her own flesh.

Vaguely, that feeling of being watched returns. It slides over her like the water, registering but not acknowledged, and not even her fur fluffs up in warning. She knows it’s Kahi, knows she should turn around and attack the magicat before they can turn on her, but there’s no energy left to muster. No reserves, no adrenaline, not even anger.

There’s only the exhaustion that follows her around like some needy cadet, tugging at her belts and demanding her attention. She thinks, maybe, that it’s the only real constant in her life. She’d been wrong about Adora, been wrong about Shadow Weaver, been wrong about –

She sucks in a breath. Removes her hands from the water and falls back, tucking her knees to her chest and linking her numb, stinging fingers together at the top of her head, her elbows brushing her knees. Her tail curls around her middle and she bites her lip hard enough to draw blood.

Could she have been wrong about the Horde?

Her eyes sting. She’s not stupid – she knows there are dots she should be connecting; patterns she should have already put together. But if she does that – if she puts all the pieces together and finds out that there _isn’t_ a mission, that she _has_ been abandoned again – she doesn’t know what she’ll do. Because there’s only so many times she can be thrown away. Only so many times she can be tossed aside for a simple mistake, or for someone newer, or for some better toy.

_How much more do I have to prove?_ she thinks, digging her claws into the backs of her hands. _What more do I have to do? Haven’t I done enough? Haven’t I done enough?_

Where’s the finish line? Where’s the end of the exam? Where can she look to see the guidelines, to see the rules, to see the list of all the things she needs to cross off? The list that she can present to Hordak and say _All of the tasks are done, and all of them are done perfectly. I’ve accomplished each goal, acquired each asset, captured every flag._

She runs through a list in her head of everything she’s done: staying with the Horde even when Adora had run away. Coming closer than anyone in the Horde to capturing Bright Moon and ending the Rebellion. Convincing one of the Princesses to switch sides and, because of that, succeeding in gaining the Horde new technology that could be the end of the Princesses once and for all. She’s captured towns and forts, wrested territory from the Rebellion’s grip, and aided Entrapta in figuring out what makes Etheria tick.

She’s gone hand to hand with She-Ra, a legendary Princess of unspeakable power, and come out on top.

_You’re a disgrace._ Shadow Weaver’s voice, unwanted and unbidden and so real Catra flinches, burying her head into her knees. _Look at you. Pathetic. You get the approval of Lord Hordak and immediately squander it._

_You were always **such** a disappointment, Catra._

The sob escapes her in a heaving gasp, and once the floodgates open she can’t stop them. Can’t stop the tears or the skipping breaths or the way she hugs herself tighter, tighter, as if she could make herself small enough for the world to leave her be, just for a little while.

“Shut up!” she wails, voice garbled from the lump in her throat. She clamps her mouth shut, pressing her palms against her lips to hold it all in. Wrests her body back under control because she will _not_ break down, not here out in the open, not ever. A mangled keen rips it’s way out of her throat and through her fingers and she snarls, forcing her lungs into submission.

Bit by bit she regains control of her body. She pushes the feelings down as hard as she can, grinding them up beneath her heel and tossing them away.

It doesn’t matter. _None_ of it matters because this is the last test. Her last chance. The final opportunity to prove herself, to prove her loyalty to the Horde. Once she’s done here she can go back to the Fright Zone and destroy the Rebellion once and for all.

_But what am I being tested on?_ she thinks, unable to stop herself. Because the Horde isn’t one for busywork, not unless it’s for Kyle. Each test serves a purpose. Each test is used as an opportunity to measure growth and learn. So what, exactly, is she being tested on?

She knows at least part of it is punishment – Hordak doesn’t suffer liars well. But with each punishment she must prove something. Shadow Weaver’s punishments usually ended up being a test of endurance – how much pain can she withstand before she cries out? How long can she run before her body gives out from under her? How many times can she be hit and still stand up and fight?

There has to be a reason for this, because otherwise – otherwise –

“Then what was the point?” she asks, voice rough. “Of any of it?”

She uncurls a little bit as she thinks, left hand rubbing at that bald spot on her right wrist, the twinge of pain keeping her focused. It’s all about investment, right? Each member of the Horde uses resources, and Hordak needs to make sure that none of the resources are wasted. Half the reason Kyle is still kept around is that, despite his constant screwups, he’s scarily good at traps. Give the boy the materials to make a snare and time to lay it out and he will catch whatever you need him to. 

There’s no doubt in Catra’s mind about her own skillset and how valuable it is to the Horde. She’s not wasting any resources. She may reallocate some every once in a while, but what resources she does accidentally waste aren’t enough for her to get kicked out. Despite the occasional defeat, she’s still gotten closer to defeating the Rebellion than even Shadow Weaver.

She shifts, edging closer to the river, lowering her arms into the water and slowly washing out her wounds. The sting of it grounds her, keeps her focused, and she leans into it, needing to feel anything other than the – the –

Well. She isn’t sure what emotions make up the tangled mass in her chest, but she doesn’t like them.

She hums under her breath, scrubbing at a scratch. The resources used to get her here – wherever _here_ is – weren’t nothing. Time, fuel, a skiff, manpower, a bot. All things that were taken away from the main fight to get her here. Surely that means Hordak didn’t cast her out, didn’t abandon her.

_If he was really that angry with me,_ she thinks, _then he would have Court Martialed me. Would’ve made it into a production, would’ve made me watch my unit’s faces – Scorpia’s face – while he sentenced me to death. I would’ve been made an example of._

Something like relief settles into her bones, and she sighs. She hasn’t been abandoned. This _is_ a mission, as much as it is a test.

But what is she being tested on? Her endurance? Her strength? Her persuasion skills? She wracks her brain, thinking back on all of the tests she’s taken, all of them dealt by Shadow Weaver or the Horde itself, but never Hordak.

Her chest tightens. This is Hordak’s personal test for her. He’s got complete control over the board. He’s got the pieces, he knows the rules, he knows the terrain. For him the only real wildcard is her, but even her actions probably won’t be surprising. After all, her every move has been recorded for years. Hordak’s probably already read her file a thousand times.

So what, then, is she being tested on?

“You’ll make those worse if you keep scrubbing like that.”

Kahi’s voice makes her jump and she whirls around, fur fluffing, baring her teeth.

Kahi sits on the ground, legs dangling over the side of the riverbank a skiff-length away. They’re more put together this time, their fur less dirty, their eyes less frantic. The calmness settling around them isn’t forced, and Catra feels her own body relax in response.

“I didn’t ask you,” Catra says, ears burning at the thought of Kahi witnessing her little breakdown. How long have they been there, observing her? 

Kahi’s ears flick. “Will you let me help you?” they ask, ignoring Catra’s comment.

Catra shrugs. “Sure,” she says, tail twitching. What’s she got to lose?

Kahi smiles, a beaming thing that makes Catra scoff, and slides down the muddy embankment to the small sandy beach. Their cloak is gone, along with their pack, and Catra squints.

“What happened to your spear?” she asks, sitting when Kahi does.

“It was taken from me,” Kahi says, unlacing a bag from her belt and getting out a small bowl, a smooth, long rock, and some plants. “You’ve already done the washing, so I’m going to apply this to the cuts and wrap them. It should keep away the infection.”

Catra’s nose scrunches at the scent. She’d rather have a shot. But Kahi’s hands are warm and gentle as they apply the plant to her scratches and she can’t make herself pull away.

The sun warms Catra’s back and she lets her eyes close a little, enough so that when Kahi switches from one arm to the other and speaks she’s startled.

“You’re lucky,” Kahi says, pausing for a moment and eyeing Catra before going back to their task. “None of these are infected. But,” they say, thumb smoothing over that certain spot on her right wrist. “I’m worried about this.” 

Catra snatches her hand back, fur fluffing. “It’s none of your business,” she says.

Kahi ignores her outburst, their head cocked to the side, assessing again. “I have extra clothes that would fit you if you’d like to get out of that uniform.”

Catra’s shaking her head before Kahi’s even finished her sentence. “No.” 

The beat of silence stretches, passes from uncomfortable to comfortable. Neither of them move. Catra eventually turns her gaze to the sparkling river and watches the fish, ignoring Kahi’s eyes on her. She’s got a feeling this will become a normal interaction for them: Kahi watching her ignoring them.

Eventually, though, curiosity outweighs the need for silence. “How’d you find me?” Catra asks.

“You weren’t subtle in your retreat,” Kahi says, voice neutral.

Catra stiffens but tries to play it off. “Should I be expecting company?" 

Kahi shakes their head. “No, I covered your tracks as I followed them. No one will find you.”

Something like gratitude makes her chest warm. “Oh,” she says. A beat. Then: “Why are you here?”

Kahi doesn’t say anything for a while. They tilt their face up to the sun and close their eyes, soaking in the warmth, their blue-grey fur almost matching the river rocks near them. Catra stares at her, waiting, the sunlight sinking into her own fur and easing the aches.

“To help you,” Kahi finally says, opening their eyes.

Catra scoffs. “That’s not much of an answer.” 

“It’s the only answer I can give right now.”

Catra frowns. “Why should I trust you?”

“Because I haven’t attacked you.”

“Yet.”

Kahi frowns. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

Catra scoffs again, ears flicking. “Promises don’t mean anything.”

“Mine do,” they say, their voice steady and certain, as unshakeable as a mountain, and for a second Catra believes them.  Believes that maybe they won’t betray her, won’t trade her up for someone better, won’t let the rest of the world eat her alive.

She shakes her head. She can’t let herself believe that. It’ll only hurt worse when they do. 

Kahi didn’t answer her question, not really, but she lets it be – she’s too tired to play the word games with her, too strung out to pick apart every shift in body language. She stands, stretches, and turns away, heading back to her den. She doesn’t need to turn around to know that Kahi is following her – their gaze never wavers from her back, and at this point the feeling is too familiar to make her fluff up.

She’ll have to keep a better lookout. She can’t get used to this – this – this hesitant camaraderie. Kahi will come to their senses soon enough. After all, Catra has nothing to offer them. No power, no resources, not anything. For some reason, though, that isn’t stopping Kahi from sticking to her like some overeager cadet fresh to the Horde. 

When they get to the den Kahi stops at the makeshift stairs. “You should rest,” they say. “You look exhausted.”

Catra hums. Hesitates. Speaks before she can stop herself. “You’ll be around, right?” she asks, unwilling to look at Kahi.

A pause. “Yes, I will,” Kahi says, their voice soft.

Catra enters the den before she can say anything else, slipping between the protruding rock and the wall and collapsing onto her bed. There’s a feeling in her chest she hasn’t felt in a long, long time, like some half-forgotten dream, and she hugs herself as she begins to drift off to sleep.

It’s not safety, not really, but it’s something like it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen.......she just needs a Break okay.......needs a blanket......needs some comfort.......needs a decent night's sleep........


	12. Interlude: Build the Embers and Watch Them Grow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i *told* y'all that i ain't done w this story! real life just be real busy so i may not upload except for once a month but this story it still definitely kicking. 
> 
> shoutout to patheticfrog for beta reading, ofc
> 
> enjoy!

**Present Day**

 

Scorpia stands in Catra’s room and tries not to let it overwhelm her. It’s cold, cold enough to make her shiver, but she hasn’t been able to turn the heat up. It’s an awful kind of reminder of Catra’s current state – dead and cold and _gone._

Catra never liked being cold. Scorpia doesn’t either. But it keeps her mind focused, keeps her senses sharp. And with the game she’s begun she’ll need all the sharpness she can get.

She buries her face into Catra’s favorite blue blanket, taking a deep breath, a few tears slipping down her face. The blanket is soft against her face, an oasis of warmth in an otherwise chilly room. Catra’s scent has long since faded, but every once in a while she’ll find a strand of hair or fur and it’ll feel as if she’s been sucker-punched.

She takes another deep breath to steady herself. There’s been no time for grief, no need for it in the eyes of the rest of the Horde – Catra is away on a mission, nothing more. Acting as if everything is fine takes its toll, though, and so every once in a while she retreats to Catra’s room, retreats into the cold and the quiet, and allows herself to feel. Allows herself to sit on Catra’s bed and wrestle with the grief threatening to drown her and with the anger threatening to undo her.

She doesn’t know who she’s angry with most – Lord Hordak, definitely, but she hates herself most days for not being a better friend, for not being more alert, for failing to protect Catra and leaving her alone even though she’d _promised._

And that’s the thing, really. She’d promised. She’d given her word to Catra. Catra, who was so hurt and bruised over broken promises. Catra, who had only just begun letting her in, allowing Scorpia to share some of the burden.

Sometimes, though, she’s so angry at Catra she could scream.

She clutches the blanket between her claws and buries her face further into it, squeezing her eyes closed as hard as she can. If Catra had just come to her instead of going to Shadow Weaver, instead of _trusting_ Shadow Weaver, none of this would have happened. She’d still be here, fiery and whole and _alive._

_Why didn’t you trust me, Wildcat?_ Scorpia thinks, breath hitching, her sob muffled by the blanket.

It shouldn’t matter. What’s done is done. There’s nothing left to do other than deal with it all, but all Scorpia wants is a chance to talk to Catra again. Ask her why. Why she had to leap head-first into everything. Why she had to leap without Scorpia. 

Her Force Captain badge chirps, reminding her of the time, and she sighs. Goes over to Catra’s desk and grabs some tissues, wiping away tears and blowing her nose. She’ll need to leave soon but she takes a few extra minutes to put herself back together. Forces the writhing ball of feelings away, locking them in her chest right next to her heart. She’s never been one for compartmentalizing, never been one for not acting on her feelings. But times are changing. No one can know what she’s planning, not yet. No one except for Lonnie.

Lonnie’s return from Bright Moon had been anticlimactic – the best Scorpia could hope for. The plan went off without a hitch, Adora taking the bait, and now all she can do is wait.

She catches a glimpse of herself in the small mirror perched on top of the desk, situated in such a way that, if Catra were sitting, Scorpia imagines she’d be able to keep an eye on anything going on behind her.

_You always were careful,_ Scorpia thinks, looking at the deep bags under her eyes, the hardness of her brow, her frown. _But not careful enough._

She tries to smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes. She tries again, crinkling up her nose, but it looks too forced. Her frown deepens. She’s not a good liar. She never has been. It’s never been a skill she bothered herself with – what’s the point in lying when she was just going to get found out anyway? But she needs the skill now, needs to learn it fast, needs to be an expert at it if what’s she’s got planned is going to work.

Scorpia closes her eyes and thinks of Catra. Thinks of the sly look she’d sometimes send Scorpia’s way, thinks of Catra cuddled up against her on the boat ride back to the Horde from the Northern reaches of Etheria.

When she opens her eyes she’s smiling her normal smile – softer around the edges, slightly pained, but normal enough to get her through the day. She nods to herself and begins casing the room again, checking the floor vents and the air ducts for the Imp or any of the small bots made for spying. She doesn’t find anything – doesn’t ever find anything – but she always looks when she comes into Catra’s room and whenever she’s stayed for a while.

She can’t be too careful, not anymore.

Once she’s checked the vents she goes back to Catra’s desk. She’s been using it as a home base of sorts, storing a specific datapad with the rest of Catra’s things. It’s not hidden away, not really. She keeps it in the middle of a stack on the desk’s corner, the only difference between it and the other’s a small dent in the corner from when Catra had dropped it one day after Scorpia had snuck up on her.

Scorpia smiles as she remembers the memory of Catra’s fluffed up fur and sneering bluster. 

The datapad isn’t anything special except for its use as a decoy. If she is being watched then at some point someone will come for her. Will come for this datapad, wanting to know what’s on it, wanting to know why it’s with Catra’s datapad’s instead of Scorpia’s.

If anyone looks in it, all they’ll find are candids of Catra that Scorpia’s snuck over the past few months. They’ll scoff, probably give her some sort of light punishment – there’s no room for weakness in the Horde, after all – but she won’t get caught. Lonnie won’t get caught. 

What’s special is the datachip Scorpia keeps in her Force Captain badge. She taps her badge quickly, three times in succession, and it pops open, revealing a small hidden compartment where the datachip rests. She’s careful taking it out, always giving it her full concentration, because one wrong move and she’ll snap it between the tips of her claws.

Maybe she should have a backup. Maybe it should be more durable. It doesn’t matter. It’s better that it’s so easily broken and rendered unusable. If she or Lonnie are found out it’s a simple matter of crushing the tiny thing and getting rid of the dust.

She puts the datachip into the datapad and waits for it to boot up. It only takes a moment before the datapad is isolated from the Horde’s main computer system, an island of privacy in the middle of a great communal sea. One datapad going off the grid every once in a while won’t throw up any alarms, especially if it’s back on the grid within a few minutes.

Scorpia doesn’t need more than that to check the messages.

Adora still hasn’t answered.

Scorpia stares at the empty screen for a second, frowning. Why hadn’t Adora answered already?

Her Force Captain Badge lets loose a four-toned chime and a shiver runs up Scorpia’s spine.

Lord Hordak has requested her presence. 

Scorpia swallows around the lump in her throat. She may not be a good liar, but there’s a certain kind of blankness that’s gotten trained into her over the years, a certain kind of steadiness that she can arrange her body into. A blank, attentive face. Straight posture, shoulders thrown back, tail not high enough to be threatening but not low enough to be weak. Acquiescence with a backbone.

Her claws are steady as she removes the datachip and puts it back into her badge, placing the datapad in the middle of the pile again. 

She walks the halls with her head held high – not high enough to be seen as arrogance, but high enough for someone of her command level. Dread curls in her stomach, strong enough to make her feel nauseous.

_I can’t do this,_ she thinks, biting her lower lip as she uses the back hallways, skirting around side hallway F5. She hesitates, slowing her pace, and swallows hard. She can’t face Lord Hordak and not react. Can’t face Catra’s _killer_ and not let the hatred for him show through.

She stops, ducking behind a pillar, and clutches her claws to her chest. Her ears begin ringing and she can’t breathe, can’t get enough air in her lungs, and she feels her knees begin to give out from under her. She slides down the wall and puts her head in between her knees, closing her eyes as tight as she can.

She doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want to go in there, doesn’t want to be in the Fright Zone, doesn’t want to start trouble. She’s never really wanted to lead. It’s too much responsibility, too much weight, too many things that could go wrong. 

Scorpia shudders, thinking of ship ride back to the Fright Zone from the Northern reaches of Etheria, Catra pressed up against her side. Can almost feel Catra beside her, her head resting on Scorpia’s arm, her voice low and warm.

_Sometimes hitting back harder means waiting out a few hits,_ Catra says, and Scorpia can almost feel her breath in her ear.

She takes a deep, steadying breath, blinking away black spots from her vision. Catra’s phantom warmth disappears as she stands, settling a blank but polite look on her face.

She can do this.

Scorpia steps into the lab, an eerie green glow emanating from the screens lining the walls. Some hang down from the ceiling, able to be moved across the room, and Entrapta is sitting in front of one of the screens, muttering to herself.

On her shoulder is the Imp, and Scorpia feels a flash of anger so hot and painful that she feels herself give in to a full-body twitch. She collects herself in an instant and Lord Hordak emerges from behind one of the larger screen a moment later.

“Force Captain,” he greets, voice like oil against Scorpia’s ears.

“Lord Hordak,” she says, saluting, then standing at attention. “I received your summons, sir.”

“Now that Force Captain Catra is,” Lord Hordak pauses, eyeing her, and Scorpia stares back, “indisposed, I need you to pick up her mission load.”

“How can I help, Lord Hordak?” she says, bile rising in her throat. She swallows hard.

Lord Hordak steps towards her, his hands behind his back, and Scorpia bites the inside of her cheek to stop herself from imagining Catra’s last moment here, in this lab.

_Am I standing where she died?_

She bites her cheek harder.

“You’ve accompanied Force Captain Catra on her latest missions. Tell me, what do you know about She-Ra?”

“No more than you, I assume, sir,” she says. “She’s a powerful opponent with very few weaknesses.”

Lord Hordak opens his mouth to say something, eyes squinting, but Entrapta interrupts. “Her weaknesses include her friends, her own moral code, Catra, her need to be the hero, and corrupted First Ones technology that makes her lose all sense of self and turns her into a fighting machine,” she says, not looking up from the screen. “The corruption manifests like it did in my bots. No control, no apparent deep thought other than the need to fight.” 

Scorpia nearly trembles with the effort to hold herself back. She wants to yell at Entrapta to shut up, wants to yell at her for allowing Catra to die. She’s always in the lab now, always with Hordak – surely she must have seen something? Surely she must have been able to _do_ something? 

The look in Hordak’s eyes is dark. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” he says, looking back at Scorpia. Her skin crawls under her gaze. “Did you know of this?”

“Somewhat, sir,” she says. “I knew there was technology that could corrupt She-Ra but thought that the device used to control her broke while we were leaving the North area.”

“It was,” Entrapta says, taking off her face mask. “But I’ve located the same signature in the heart of the Crimson Wastes. If we can get to it I might be able to modify the code so that we might have some control over the corrupted She-Ra.”

Hordak hums, a smile on his face, and Scorpia feels sick again. “Force Captain Scorpia. You and Cadet Lonnie are to accompany Entrapta to the Crimson Wastes to retrieve this technology. You’ll leave at dawn,” he says.

Scorpia is about to salute when he stalks closer, stepping into her personal space. “Don’t fail me, Force Captain,” he says. “It would be such a shame.”

It takes every ounce of self-control for Scorpia not to twitch in anger. “Never, Lord Hordak.”

“Good,” he says, turning away. “You’re dismissed.”

She salutes and walks calmly out of the lab, taking the back hallways. Makes her way towards Lonnie’s room, swallowing her anger and letting urgency overtake her instead.

She finds Lonnie in minutes, not bothering to knock on the door. She cases the room – vents, corners, under the beds – searching for those glowing yellow eyes. Lonnie waits, watching her work, not interrupting her, and Scorpia’s so grateful that she hugs Lonnie tight, ignoring the girl’s complaints.

“Strong as ever, I see,” Lonnie says, setting back on her bed.

Scorpia nods. “Where are Rogelio and Kyle?”

“They got caught up in the map room. Rogelio noticed something off about how the maps showed trade routes or something,” Lonnie says, typing something on her datapad before giving Scorpia her full attention. “Not that it’s not good to see you, but I’ve got to get to the sparring room in a few minutes.” 

Scorpia nods. “Hordak gave us a mission.”

“Oh?” Lonnie, says, brows twitching.

“We’re going to the Crimson Wastes,” Scorpia says. “Something about First Ones tech.”

“Maybe we’ll run into Catra,” Lonnie says, giving her wink, and Scorpia nods. They can’t be too careful.

“Yeah,” she says. “That would be nice. I haven’t heard from her since you last saw her.” She sighs, sitting on the bed, her shoulders hunching. “I thought she would have already contacted me. I thought she cared more.”

“Oh, she cares. You didn’t see her. She probably just needs to think some things through,” Lonnie says, placing a hand on Scorpia’s shoulder.

Scorpia leans into her touch. “Should we go ahead and get on with the project?” 

Lonnie purses her lips. “Yeah,” she says after a moment. “It still needs to happen, even if she’s not with us.” 

Scorpia swallows, dread curling in her gut. “And if it goes wrong?”

Lonnie’s gaze goes hard and she straightens, the determined line of her shoulders as unmovable as a mountain. “Then we deal with it.”

“Simple as that?” Scorpia asks.

Lonnie nods, squeezing her shoulder. “Simple as that.”

Scorpia lets out a breath, closes her eyes, and sits for a while, letting her mind go blank, reveling in the warmth of Lonnie’s touch.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

Scorpia approaches her squad with a sheepish grin, her heart heavy in her chest. She does a quick case of the room, looking for the Imp, and comes up empty. Her squad doesn’t notice her approach, too absorbed with the map on the table, their heads bent together.

“All I’m saying is that if we approach the town from the North we’ll be able to cut off their supply lines and block their only real way of escape,” Alyssa says, stabbing a place on the map.

Adrien shakes their head. “If they’re desperate enough they’ll swim across the river anyway.” 

“Then let’s make sure they don’t get desperate,” Alyssa says. “We go at night, secure the main road, and go from there.”

“I don’t know, guys,” Dominic says, wringing his hands together. “Seems too risky. What if we go in and tell them that they’re part of the Horde?”

Alyssa scoffs. “Yeah, that’ll go over well. If you want to be skewered by pitchforks be my guest.” She lifts her head, her eyes catching Scorpia’s, and jumps. “Force Captain!”

They all startle, throwing out salutes, and Scorpia waves them away. “I already told you guys you don’t have to do that,” she says, falling into the familiar rhythm.

Adrien smiles. “Force Code, Captain.”

Scorpia rolls her eyes and gathers them in for a hug, squeezing extra tight. They groan, of course, but their smiles never waver, and Scorpia feels the smile on her face go from practiced to genuine.

“What are you guys working on?” she asks, peering at the map. 

Jace shrugs. “Some simulation mission,” he says, leaning against the table. He nods towards Alyssa and Adrien. “They’re taking it way too seriously though.”

Scorpia snorts, ignoring the twin noises of consternation from Alyssa and Adrien. “You ever think that maybe you’re taking it too casually?”

Jace scrunches up his face. “No way. This isn’t even a major exam, it’s just busywork. We’ve had this exact same simulation before,” he says.

“We almost failed it last time,” Dominic says, staring at the table with wide eyes. “If we fail it again we might get punished or be put through rougher simulations or get Court Martialed and sentenced to exile and –”

“Whoa there, Dominic,” Scorpia says, placing her claws on the lizard boy’s shoulders. “That’s worst case scenario. In fact, that’s such a worst case scenario I can’t even think of how you’d end up being exiled for failing a simulation.”

Dominic wrings his hands but meets Scorpia’s eyes. “We’ve heard rumors,” he says, “that –”

“Stop it,” Adrien hisses, elbowing Dominic. “Force Captain has enough on her mind than to worry about unsubstantiated rumors.”

Scorpia frowns. “No, come on, you can tell me.”

Dominic’s eyes dart around. “No, it’s fine, it’s nothing. It’s not true, anyway, so there’s really nothing to worry about.”

Adrien nods, crossing their arms across their chest. “Exactly. It’s strictly against the Horde’s rules regarding waste of resources.”

Scorpia’s frown deepens as she removes her claws from Dominic’s shoulders. She steps through the group to get closer to the table, studying the map. She’s run this simulation a thousand times before, could do it in her sleep, but she remembers being confused by it the first time she was given the assignment.

“You know,” she says, tapping the tip of her claw against the map, “I failed this four times before I finally passed.”

Dominic sucks in a sharp breath. “Really?”

“Yep,” Scorpia says. “And even then I only barely passed. Stealth isn’t my strong suit.”

“So it’s about stealth?” Alyssa asks, already typing on her datapad.

Scorpia nods. “Oh yeah. This test is designed to test your stealth, but mostly it’s designed to see how many ways you can implement that stealth.”

Jace cocks his head to the side. “What do you mean?”

“If I told you I’d be helping you cheat,” she says, ignoring their groans. “But what I’m trying to say is that you guys don’t have to worry. You’re not going to get exiled for failing a test.”

Jace shoots her a dubious look. “Are you sure about that, Scorpia?”

She wants to say yes and close the matter altogether. Wants to assuage their fears like any good Force Captain would. But Catra’s voice, barely louder than a whisper, appears in her head.

_Come on, Scorpia, use that brain of yours and get some answers._

“Why aren’t you sure?” she asks.

There’s a beat of silence where her squad all look at each other and her chest clenches. She’s left them by themselves for too long. Do they not trust her anymore? Is she too far out of the loop to be brought back in?

She sees Dominic swallow hard. “There have been rumors about the Horde getting rid of anyone who isn’t pulling their weight,” Dominic blurts, his words running together.

Adrien scowls. “They’re not true,” they say. “Everyone knows that Lord Hordak values efficiency above all else. Why would he get rid of soldiers after spending years investing in them?”

Jace shrugs again. “Maybe he’s finally gotten tired of not winning the war.”

Alyssa shakes her head, idly tapping her datapad. “We can’t think like that. Doubt leads to mistakes and mistakes mean we lose the fight. It’s just rumors.”

Jace glares, dark eyes hard. “Why shouldn’t we doubt? We haven’t had a major win in months and no one knows what Lord Hordak’s working on in his lab. We aren’t told anything.” He gestures to the map. “What’s the point of this if we don’t even know the end goal?” 

“Guys!” Adrien shouts. They all look to them and they gesture to Scorpia. “Have you forgotten our Force Captain is in the room with us?” 

Scorpia feels the tension scrape against her skin, all eyes on her as her squad begins tensing. Dominic’s yellow eyes flash in something too close to fear to make her comfortable, and she sighs. There are two ways this can go: either she tells them all to be quiet and trust in the Horde, or she reassures them that their questions should be asked, that these things should be wondered about.

The Scorpia before Catra’s death wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t falter.

But Scorpia’s finding that there’s a lot about the bedrock of her life that’s beginning to falter under the weight of realization. 

“I think,” Scorpia says, the words half-stuck in her throat because this is like Lonnie all over again and she doesn’t want to do this, not again. Doesn’t want to shake the very foundation of their lives. Doesn’t want to be the one who made them question, who made them doubt, who made them wonder.

Ignorance is bliss. She wants that bliss back. Wants Catra back. Wants it all back.

But she can’t rewind time, no matter how desperately she may want to. And she needs her squad, needs their assistance and their loyalty and their courage.

“I think,” she says again, stronger this time, “that Hordak has been pulling the wool over our eyes for a long time. I don’t think he’s ever once told us the truth.” She pauses, meeting their gazes, watching as the color begins draining from their faces. “I also think that these are very dangerous questions that you’re asking, and you need to think very carefully about where you speak them and who you speak them to.”

Jace, ever inquisitive, is the first to break the ensuing silence, voice strong despite the ashy pallor of his skin. “Scorpia,” he says. Pauses. Clears his throat. Then: “What’s it like beyond the Fright Zone?”

Scorpia thinks about the Whispering Woods, about the Northern areas, about Salineas. She thinks about the Princesses and about the common folk she’d seen rally behind them. She thinks about her own people, of vague memories that feel more like dreams than anything else. 

“It’s peaceful when there’s no one fighting.”

“Stop,” Adrien says, voice sharp and trembling. “Stop this, Force Captain. You don’t believe any of this. You’ve been brainwashed. Just,” they say, flushing angrily, “just go take a nap or something. You’re just tired.”

Scorpia can’t help the brittle laugh that escapes her lips. “Trust me, I’ve tried to sleep. It doesn’t work.” She only dreams about Catra. Dreams about her screaming for help and Scorpia being unable to reach her. Dreams about her being cold and alone and sad somewhere, all by herself. Dreams about Hordak’s fist around her wildcat’s throat and _squeezing_ until Catra’s eyes go lifeless. 

She dreams about that horrific, empty _thunk_ of Catra’s head hitting the robot’s metal exterior, about how she didn’t even twitch.

As if they’ve read her thoughts Adrien scoffs and says, “What about Force Captain Catra? What does she have to say about all of this?”

“Nothing,” Scorpia says, looking at the ground. She wants the blanket.

“Yeah, right,” Adrien says. “She always has something to say.”

“Not this time,” Scorpia says, closing her eyes against the welling tides of anger and sadness in her chest. She’s said too much already. They weren’t ready. She’s jumped the blaster and now all of her plans are ruined. She should have kept it between herself and Lonnie. Maybe she shouldn’t have even _tried_ in the first place. Maybe –

“I don’t believe you,” Adrien continues. “Call her on the datapad and –”

She hears Alyssa gasp and the telltale sound of a hand being slapped over someone’s mouth to quieten them but it’s too late.

“I can’t contact her because she’s dead,” Scorpia says, low and quiet, her ears ringing. “Catra’s dead and Lord Hordak killed her and it wasn’t even a fair fight. She lies to him and he _killed her.”_

Quiet descends again and Scopria takes a deep, shaky breath, tears welling up behind her eyelids. She swallows hard around the lump in her throat and wishes, desperately, for the blue blanket to wrap around her shoulders.

A hand touches her claw and she opens her eyes to see Dominic in front of her, yellow eyes shining. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I know she meant a lot to you.”

Scorpia nods. “She was everything.”

Jace splutters. “No. No way. No one deserves to die without being able to fight back,” he says. “We’re not going to let this be swept under a rug, right?” 

Scorpia shakes her head and carefully wipes her eyes. “No, we’re not. But I’m going to need your help,” she says.

Jace nods. “I don’t care what we’re doing. I’m in.”

Dominic nods too, his hand still holding Scorpia’s claw. “What could go wrong?” he asks, then immediately frowns. “Everything. Everything could go wrong. We’re all definitely going to die.”

“That’s the spirit,” Alyssa says, slapping him on the back. “Let’s wreck some stuff. I’ve always wanted to blow parts of this place sky high.”

They all turn to Adrien. Adrien glares at them. “You really think I’d side with Hordak? You guys have no faith in me,” they say.

Jace grins, eyes going wide. “Dude, you didn’t use Hordak’s proper title.”

Adrien smile is sharp. “Hordak can bite me. If you’re going to be breaking the rules, you need someone who knows them forwards and backwards.” They look at Scorpia. “What’s the plan, boss?”

Scorpia grins, relief welling up in her chest, and she crushes them in another hug. They don’t struggle, returning the hug just as eagerly. When she finally lets them go she can’t stop resolve hardening in her chest or the way her smile takes on a sharper edge.

“Alright everyone, here’s the plan.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u'll all be glad to know i know EXACTLY what i'm doing now bc i managed to map out the whole damn story in a fit of inspiration at like 3am a few days ago 
> 
> anyway i love scorpia
> 
> also @ everyone who comments thank u! i try to answer everyone's comment but it i don't answer urs just know that i appreciate ur reading and commenting so much!


	13. eyes wide and teeth bared

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! thanks as ever to my beta reader patheticfrog
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: animal death and gutting - nothing terribly graphic but just in case
> 
> i'm gonna try to update every two weeks or so but this semester has been super busy so like. i can't promise everything
> 
> also thank u to everyone who comments! they really make my day!

Catra pauses in the shadow of the large leafy plant sheltering the den’s door, peering between the leaves. There’s nothing amiss – the sun is higher in the sky than she thought it would be but other than that all is quiet. She narrows her eyes, leaning forward a bit, searching for movement among the branches. Nothing but birds. She looks harder, her ears straining, searching for a spot where the shadows don’t line up right, listening for a discordant rhythm in the trees.

Nothing.

Kahi is near, though, she can feel it – that watched feeling that once had her fur standing on end now feeling more familiar than she’s comfortable with.

The other day’s weariness clings to her, wraps its arms around her and refuses to let go. If she thinks too long on the feeling it becomes Shadow Weaver’s arms, becomes her voice and her hands and her magic. It’s enough to make her cold – with fury or fear she doesn’t know.

She takes a deep breath as she watches the swaying of the trees. The days have blended together to the point where she’s lost track of how many days she’s been here. Whatever the number is it’s too high. She should have already been in the main camp, should have already been convincing the magicats to join the Horde.

It may not be the right path. She might have already failed the test. But it’s the only thing she can think of that Hordak would want her to do. The Rebellion would never see it coming and, if they played their cards right, the magicats could be used as spies. If the other magicats are as adept as Kahi is at disappearing into the background, then they won’t get caught.

Catra nods to herself, still scanning the canopy. It’s not the worst plan she’s ever come up with, but not the best either. Again, there are too many variables. But Adora won’t know any of these magicats – the only real suspicion that she’ll have is that they’ve appeared from out of nowhere. Catra could spin a lie, could make whatever magicat she chooses to tell a good tale, but there’s only so much she’d be able to explain away. If the magicats were a major part of Etheria before Hordak arrived, then whatever explanation she’s concocted will be worthless.

She needs to know their history. Needs to know if they were major players in the politics of Etheria pre-Horde.

A bit of movement in one of the trees closest to the den catches Catra’s gaze and she follows it. Watches as the silhouette shifts from formless to familiar as Kahi leaps to the ground. There’s a slight skittering of the loose rocks as they land but other than that they are soundless.

Catra notes the placement of their body when they land. _I want to know how to do that._

As if sensing her thoughts Kahi turns towards the den and smiles, waving a hand but not saying anything.

Catra nods. She can’t get answers if she doesn’t ask questions. The sun is warm on her fur as she exits the den, climbing down the rocks that lead up to it. Her stomach growls but she ignores it, opting to stare at Kahi instead. The magicat meets her stare, gaze pensive, and the calmness they radiate begins leeching into Catra despite herself.

Catra sniffs. “Why haven’t you taken me back to the main camp?" 

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I’m a Horde soldier,” Catra says, noting their slight flinch, “and I’m apparently a traitor.”

Kahi hums. “Perhaps.”

“Stop that,” Catra hisses, clenching her hands into fists. “Stop with all of these non-answers. If that’s all you’re going to give me then you can leave.” 

Kahi blinks, tensing. “I can’t give you the answers you seek.”

“Why?” Catra says, throwing her hands up into the air. “Then what’s the point? Sati isn’t here, Lyra isn’t here – when you helped me you basically deserted them. Why hold back?”

“Because,” Kahi says, “you cannot be truthful to yourself.”

Catra steps closer, getting into Kahi’s space. “And I thought I told you to stop half-answering me.”

Kahi’s ears twitch but they give no ground, instead cocking their head to the side. “You only half-answer yourself. Why should I do anything differently?”

Catra’s moving before she registers it, pushing Kahi away from her. Kahi stumbles back, eyes widening in surprise before they right themselves. 

“Go away,” Catra says, turning towards the unmarked path to the river. “You’re useless.”

Instead of leaving Kahi lingers in Catra’s peripheral vision like a ghost, silent and unobtrusive. Catra ignores her. She moves quickly, nearly running, and Kahi keeps up with an ease that makes Catra want to snarl. She’s a soldier. She might not have excelled as quickly as Adora, but she was always the fastest, always the smartest, always the best at thinking on her feet.

Here, though, it feels as if she’s a cadet all over again.

She doesn’t hesitate when she gets to the river. The small strip of sandy beach leads out to shallow water that almost immediately shifts into a deep, dark blue. The water is cold enough to make her shiver but she wades in, stopping when the water hits her shins. She keeps close to the riverbank, going out just far enough that she’ll be able to see any curious fish swimming up from the deeper part of the river. The current tugs on her fur as she crouches, cupping her hands together so she can drink.

Flashes of silver catch her eyes and she stills, waiting, hands poised just above the water. She’s never fished before – only made traps for minnows and other smaller fish, but hunting their larger counterparts can’t be too different.

The sun is warm on her back, soaking into her skin, keeping her from constantly shivering. Her head goes quiet, the burbling of the water invading her every sense, and she lets it wash over her. Lets it wash away any thought of the Horde, of Hordak, of her mission. Lets it wash away her doubts.

A fish swims close to her and she strikes. Misses. Her lips curl up in a snarl of frustration but she stills again. Waits. The sun beats a steady path across the sky. Another fish, another strike, another miss.

She’s moving to stand up when she finally notices Kahi an arm’s length away, scanning the surface of the water.

“Kahi, what –”

Kahi hisses, throwing out their hand in a sharp gesture for quiet. Catra’s teeth clack together in her haste to obey, a chill running down her spine.

“Stay very still,” Kahi says, voice so low Catra almost misses it. Catra doesn’t bother responding – instead she tenses further, suddenly aware of the sway of her legs as she crouches in the shallow water, fighting to keep herself balanced on the rocky riverbed. Kahi’s eyes scan the surface of the water, their fur fluffing, and Catra feels her own fluff in response.

Kahi’s eyes go wide, their pupils dilating, and Catra follows their gaze. There’s a bit of movement to her right, slight and nearly unnoticeable. It takes her mind a moment to process what she’s seeing, certain there’s some trick being played. She swallows hard, breath halting in her chest as she eyes the creature.

It’s big. Monstrously so. The length of a skiff at least, though not as wide. It’s perfectly camouflaged against the river and the riverbed, looking like a drifting log. 

 _Great,_ she thinks. _The logs have teeth._

She traces the lines of the lizard, noting the wickedly sharp teeth protruding from it’s lower jaw. Each one is at least as long as her pinkie finger and she counts at least twenty. The lizard’s murky eyes stare into her, dark and dead in a way that makes her feel very, very small. The knowledge is sudden and bone-deep, a certainty that she’s never once not trusted: she’s being hunted.

“Catra,” Kahi says, their voice impossibly soft. “Look at me.”

Catra forces herself to follow the order even as every part of her rejects it. She should be keeping the lizard, all of one arm’s lengths away, in her sights. Better yet, she should be running. 

Kahi doesn’t meet her gaze. Instead they stare intently at the lizard, ears flat against their head. “On my signal, move.”

Catra’s chest clenches. She may not be able to – she’s wildly off balance, caught halfway through shifting her weight from one leg to the other. The only movement she can make is a slow, ungraceful leap backwards that’ll send her sprawling on her back rather than out of danger.

Kahi moves before she can tell them this. 

There’s a sudden explosion of frothy white water and Catra pushes herself backward. The waves buffet her as she slips on the sandy gravel, unable to get a decent foothold, but it’s enough to get her out of danger. She feels the reverberation in the air as the lizard’s jaws snap together near her foot. A second later she’s out of the water, panting, watching Kahi wrangle the creature.

Kahi’s already on top of it, sitting astride its back as their hands wrap around its jaw. They hiss at it, loud and long, their legs gripping the sides of the creature as it tries to fling them off its back. The creature’s lunge has taken it half out of the water and Kahi refuses to let it go back, using their entire body to hold the lizard down.

“Need any help?” Catra asks, standing, hands half-curled and so tense they hurt.

“Make sure there aren’t any others coming up to investigate,” Kahi yells, still holding onto the creature’s jaws.

Catra does a quick scan of the river around them, looking for any log-like shapes, but the surface is clear.

“We’re clear,” she says, taking another couple of steps away from the river.

“Good,” Kahi pants, glaring at the creature beneath them. It’s started to calm down, deflating with an angry, buzzing hiss, its small claws digging into the gravelly sand. 

“Now,” Kahi says, “put your hands where mine are and grip as hard as you can.”

“Wait, what?”

Kahi’s tone is calm but there’s a hint of impatience behind it. “We’re going to switch positions. You need to come over here and hold it down while I kill it.”

Catra doesn’t hesitate. She places her hands right behind Kahi’s, taking a second to marvel at the rough texture of the lizard’s skin.

“As hard as you can,” Kahi says, already beginning to shift out of the way so Catra can take their place on the creature’s back. “It’s building up the energy to lash out again and if you can’t hold it I’ll be dead.”

Catra nods, her claws digging into the creature’s scales. “I got it.” 

Kahi doesn’t double check, letting go of the creature’s jaws and slipping off of it’s back. Catra clambers on, flexing her thighs, digging her knees into the creature and trying to bear her body weight evenly down the lizard’s back. 

“Tilt the head up,” Kahi says, pulling a knife from their belt. Catra does as she’s told, digging her claws into the scales, and looks away as Kahi slits the lizard’s throat. The creature gurgles and bucks in a desperate bid to free itself but Catra keeps it steady. In another moment the lizard falls limp.

“Alright,” Kahi says, standing. They dip the knife in the river, swishing it around for a second before putting it back on their belt. “Good job.”

Catra relaxes her fingers one by one. “What is it?” she asks as she stands, shaking her hands to try and rid them of the ache.

“A crocodile,” Kahi says, placing their hands around the massive, knobbed head. “Help me drag it out of the water.”

Getting the crocodile out of the water is muddy and ungraceful, but with a few well placed shoves they’re able to get it safely onto the small sandy beach. The lizard is as long as a skiff, it’s armored hide a deep grey in the sunlight. Catra scrapes a claw down it’s hide, softly at first but then harder when the hide doesn’t give way.

“It’s not a bot,” Catra says.

“No, it’s not,” Kahi says, placing their hands on their hips and looking down at the carcass. “But it’s tough. Tougher than a lot of things. Makes for good armor. And,” they continue with a grin, “the meat is some of the best.”

Catra can’t help the grin slipping onto her face. “How do we cook it?”

“First,” Kahi says, “we need to skin it. I’ve got everything I need in my pack. Stay here and keep an eye out for other animals looking for an easy meal.”

They climb up the riverbank, up a tree, and disappear into the canopy before Catra can reply. Catra huffs as she waits, the last bit of adrenaline still racing through her veins. She grabs a few pebbles and begins tossing them into the water to work off some of her energy, keeping her ears towards the forest behind her.

The water ripples with each _plunk_ of stone, and Catra’s thoughts begin to wander. What’s Scorpia doing? Has she noticed she’s gone? Does she miss her? What about Lonnie? Rogelio? Kyle? Have any of them noticed?

Has Adora?

Catra snorts, tossing a rock harder into the water and watching the ripples splash. Adora wouldn’t care – she stopped caring the moment she deserted the Horde.

The thought hits her hard and fast, making a lump grow in her throat: If she died here, would Adora care?

A rustle of branches interrupts Catra’s reverie and she tenses before seeing Kahi walk down the path to her. There’s a pack on their back and another slung precariously around on of their shoulders. They set them down at the end of the path and open one of them, rummaging until they pull out a knife. It’s longer than the one on their belt, newer looking.

“It’s sharper,” Kahi says, coming to stand beside Catra. “Though the underbelly isn’t as strong as the back hide you still need to use the sharpest knife you can get your hands on.”

Catra helps Kahi roll the crocodile onto its back then steps away, watching as Kahi begins skinning the animal. Once done, Kahi sets the skin aside and hands Catra the knife from their belt. Together they gut the creature and begin sectioning off meat.

“How’d you learn how to spot these?” Catra asks. Though the crocodile is the largest carcass she’s ever worked with it’s still a carcass and the movements are the same. If she gets lost in the rhythm now, though, she’ll think of the Horde again, think of Shadow Weaver, and she doesn’t want to deal with that so soon after yesterday.

“In the moment,” Kahi says, their hands quick as they slice through the meat.

Catra scoffs. “If you’re going to keep up with this half-answer nonsense then don’t bother answering. I can learn as I go too, you know,” Catra says, her tail lashing against the ground. 

Kahi sighs. “The first time I encountered a crocodile was within the first month of coming here,” they say. “We were camping on the ground, then, on the banks of the Lowland River. I was teaching one of the younger kids to fish when I noticed one of the logs floating on the river moving against the current.”

Kahi’s voice takes on a far away tone and Catra pauses in her work, watching them. They move by rote, going through the motions, but the memory has taken them – their fur fluffing up a little bit, their tail beginning to lash. Their grip is white-knuckling their knife, hard enough to be seen through their blue-grey fur.

“I was lucky it was a juvenile. An adult like this one would have killed me. It lunged for the child but I was close enough and the water was low enough that I tackled it away, getting on top of it and holding its jaws closed.” They shrug and shake their head, a rueful grin on their face. “It was luck that I happened to do the right thing, luck that it was a small crocodile.”

Kahi falls silent and Catra frowns. She needs to keep them talking, needs to know more about whatever they’re willing to talk about. “So you’ve killed a lot, then?”

Kahi shakes their head. “This is my third.”

Catra blinks. “What?”

Kahi grins, their eyes sparkling when they look at Catra. “I’m not foolish enough to challenge a crocodile to any sort of battle unless absolutely necessary.”

“Great,” Catra says. “Saved by an amateur.”

Kahi laughs. “It’s gotten harder over the years to hunt many of the creatures here. We don’t bother them unless absolutely necessary,” they say, grabbing the head and using their knife to remove some of the crocodile’s teeth. 

“Are those teeth something special?” Catra asks, moving towards the river to wash the blood from her hands.

“No,” Kahi says, putting their hand to their neck and revealing a necklace. “I keep them to remind myself not to get cocky.”

The necklace is sparse, only five or six teeth threaded into it. Each one looks as if it was threaded straight from the creature’s mouth – many still yellow and sharp enough to nick skin if they had the chance.

Catra scrubs her hands, careful not to aggravate any of the cuts that litter her forearms. “The animals here are more aggressive than they are in the Fright Zone.”

Kahi hums. “There’s a wizard in the mountains who’s been changing things. The crocodiles used to be smaller, their hide far suppler. When we arrived here it wasn’t fit for armor but now it is.”

“A wizard?” Catra asks, the fur on the back of her neck beginning to stand. She’ll need to keep an eye out for him. The last thing she needs is to go against another magic user.

Kahi nods. “Sati spent days trying to talk to him, but he refused to speak. One day he walked into the woods and covered his trail so well we couldn’t track him.”

“Then how do you know he’s in the mountains? He might be dead.”

“You can see strange lights coming from the mountains. It only happens once a year during mid-winter and started right after the wizard was banished here."

Catra scoffs. “Again with the banishment,” she says. “Maybe he wanted to come here and get away from the war.”

Kahi gives her a piercing look. “You know as well as I that no one comes voluntarily to Beast Island.”

Catra’s heart lurches in her chest. “Shut up,” she says, voice sharp.

“The longer you spend in denial over your fate the worse it will be.”

“Shut up! This isn’t Beast Island,” she says. Because it can’t be. If it’s Beast Island then there is no mission, no last thing she has to prove. If it’s Beast Island it means she’s been abandoned _again,_ been left behind _again._

If it’s Beast Island, then Shadow Weaver was right – she’s nothing more than trash. Nothing more than an old toy to be thrown out now that Adora won’t play with her anymore.

Kahi steps closer but Catra hisses, swiping at them. “Stay away from me.”

“Fine,” Kahi says, settling down on the ground. They look up at Catra and sigh, a quiet thing full of so much pity Catra could scream. They gesture towards the river. “Follow the current upstream for a bit until you come to a crossing. Cross it and then keep going straight. You’ll find your answer before sundown.”

Catra scoffs. “How do you know I’ll return?”

Kahi softens, ears flicking. “That’s your decision, little one,” they say. “You’re not my prisoner.”

 _Oh, so you’ve been following me around for fun?_ Before she can move Kahi gestures to the pack left at the foot of the trail back to the den. “Take that pack with you.”

“No,” Catra says. “I don’t need your help.” _I can take care of myself._

Catra steps over the bag, kicking it for good measure before running through the woods. She weaves between tree trunks and leaps over gnarled, jutting roots. The undergrowth pulls at her uniform but she ignores it, following the river.

No one follows her. No one watches her. Once again she is alone in the woods, only the trees and the birds to keep her company. Her stomach growls but she ignores it, pushing herself faster, breathing in the soil-rich air.

There’d been a time where Catra would have run away from the Horde given the slightest chance as long as Adora was with her. How many times did they perch on the highest balconies and talk about leaving? How many hours did they spend in the secret places they found, hiding from the world around them, and tell stories of what they would do when they finally ran away?

It hadn’t amounted to anything. Shadow Weaver had made sure of that – had made sure that any inclination to run was snuffed out with her magic.

 _One day we’ll be in control,_ Adora had said, pressing her fingers into a fresh bruise on Catra’s cheek, the sting of it softened by her words. _Then we can do whatever we want._

Catra slows to a walk, panting, a stitch forming in her side. She rubs at it as she walks, keeping an eye out for the crossing as she listens to the swaying of the branches above her. It’s peaceful here, despite everything, and there’s a small part of her that doesn’t want to go back. The wind might be cold but the sun is warm. There’s someone watching her but they can’t use magic to threaten her. The air isn’t stale, isn’t suffused with machinery and oil.

She takes a deep, focused breath, filling her lungs with salt-tinged air. It’s quiet without the constant hum of machines but over the days she’s gotten used to it. Gotten used to not writing reports, gotten used to not having to report to someone, gotten used to not having to watch her back so meticulously.

She spots the crossing, a felled tree hanging over the river, and doesn’t hesitate. It bobs slightly under her weight but holds steady, and she makes it across without incident. She keeps going, keeps walking, keeps listening to the land around her. Lets herself get lost in the rhythm of her own footsteps and thinks.

Scorpia had walked with her through the myriad of back hallways in Hordak’s castle, once, both of them unable to sleep. It’s been early in the morning – early enough where it seemed as if the world shouldn’t still exist. Even the constant hum of machinery seemed muffled but the deepening night, lulled to stupor. 

They’d roamed aimlessly, keeping close enough to feel each other’s warmth. For once Scorpia wasn’t babbling on, the bags under her eyes betraying the level of her exhaustion.

“Why can’t you sleep?” Catra had asked, voice low.

Scorpia had shrugged. “Bad dreams, I guess.”

“Tell me about them.”

Scorpia frowned. “I don’t know, Wildcat. They weren’t good.”

Catra scoffed but there’d been no heat to it. “Come on,” she’d said. “I’ve got my fair share of bad dreams. Tell me yours and I’ll tell you mine.”

Scorpia sighed, biting her lip, but had eventually begun to talk. “Sometimes I have dreams about my moms,” Scorpia said. “I can’t remember their faces well, but if I heard them today I’d know them in a heartbeat.”

Catra blinked, startling a bit at the admission. “I didn’t know you had a life before the Horde.”

“Force Captain Orientation,” Scorpia said, a smile playing on her lips. “I don’t remember a lot of it, and if I try to remember it slips away, but sometimes I dream about it.”

Catra leaned closer, fur brushing Scorpia’s arm. “What do you remember?”

Scorpia closed her eyes, tilting her face up to the ceiling. “Sunlight. So much sunlight. Warmth like I’ve never felt before. Two women – my moms. I don’t know how I know, but I know that’s them. They’re saying something but I can never remember what. But I know their voices.”

Catra had paused. “That doesn’t seem like a bad dream to me.”

Scorpia opened her eyes and looked down at Catra. Then she shrugged. “Maybe not. But it hurts.” She paused for a moment, blinking, then: “Do you remember anything from before?”

There had been a cold feeling in Catra’s chest, something dense and heavy and too painful to put a name to. “No.”

Catra shakes her head to chase the memory away. The scent of salt is stronger now, almost overpowering, and she picks up the pace. The undergrowth begins to thin, the trees becoming thin and wiry, and all at once she’s standing at the edge of a cliff.

She blinks against the unencumbered sunlight, squinting as it bounces off the waves. The water glitters, almost blinding, and a cool wind buffets her face. She ducks her head and takes a measured breath, beating down the sudden panic of having the air stolen from her.

When she looks up again, all she sees is blue.

The horizon is nothing more than a perfect, hazy melding of sky and sea. She looks to her left and to her right but there’s nothing – no other land, no Fright Zone in the distance, no Bright Moon. Just the island cliffs and the smashing waves.

At her back, the trees of Beast Island sway in the wind.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i AM GOING APESHIT FERAL OVER THE NEW CONTENT AKJDFKLASDFH CATRA! HER HAIR! HER UNIFORM! SCORPIA LOOKS SO SAD!?!?!?!?!? listen i love and adore catra and will protect her w my life but if she keeps hurting scorpia imma have to throw hands
> 
> and *yes* i know u've all been waiting for catra to begin to accept her circumstances and, well. it's just the beginning >:)
> 
> .....also i'm not certain if i'm happy w this chapter yet which is half the reason it took so long so like. i might end up reworking it who knows


	14. exile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaand we're back! hey y'all! thanks to patheticfrog as per usual for betaing
> 
> real life is still kicking my ass so this chapter is a bit short but i be trying
> 
> enjoy!

It’s enough to take her breath away. There’s that feeling again, creeping along her spine, of being too small and not small enough – the same feeling she felt when she first arrived.

 _They really did toss me out like trash,_ she thinks, huffing out a breathless laugh. She digs her palms into her temples, eyes wide and watering from the steady wind as it whips through her hair. The breathless laugh bubbling up in her throat morphs halfway out of her mouth to something ugly and full of sound. The wind buffets her and she stumbles back to the safety of the forest, away from the unencumbered sun, and laughs. It scrapes against the back of her throat, her smile stretched so wide across her face it hurts.

Catra presses her back into a tree and laughs until it’s little more than a scream.

There’s no coming back from this – no coming back from Beast Island. It shouldn’t matter – it’s not as if some part of her didn’t already _know._ She’s not stupid. But if her suspicion stayed just that – suspicion – then she could at least have hope of going back home.

The thought almost stops her cold. Could the Fright Zone be considered home anymore? Was it ever? She doesn’t know anymore. But it’s familiar and that’s enough.

She keens, sinking to the forest floor and pulling her knees to her chest. She wraps her tail around her waist and hugs her knees as tight as she can, tears blurring her vision. The sob comes straight from her stomach, rattling through her chest and out of her throat. Her breath stutters as she cries, head becoming light and fuzzy even as it begins to hurt.

She tucks her head into her knees and wails. Lets the ache in her chest spread throughout her body. There is anger – there is always anger – but mostly there’s a desperate, throbbing pain that threatens to hollow her out. She curls tighter into herself, claws digging into her skin as she hugs herself. Moves her arms so they’re pushing her head further into her knees, but it’s not enough cover. She wants her blue blanket. Wants to wrap herself in it and disappear into its familiar warmth like she did when she was younger.

But there’s no blanket, no Adora, to comfort her now. No Adora to hold her hand and tell her it will be alright. No Adora to give her a hug. No Adora to make promises she won’t be able to keep. Maybe it’s better this way. Maybe this was how it was always meant to happen. Maybe Shadow Weaver was right all along when she told Catra that she was never made for great things.

As she cries, something inside of her cracks open – the same white-hot ball at her core that broke when Adora left the Horde.

 _How dare they,_ she thinks, her breaths beginning to even out. The thought whirls around her head, again and again, growing from a whisper to a shout. _How dare they how dare they how darethey howdaretheyhowdarethey **howdarethey-!**_

Her breathing is harsh again, sucked between clenched, bared teeth. She lashes out at the tree behind her, digging her claws deep into the wood. She rips off the bark, the branches, the leaves. Flings herself at the unforgiving wood again and again until her fur is sticky with it’s sap. Tears blur her vision but she keeps going, keeps hitting, keeps fighting. The snarl across her face is a familiar comfort because this, oh _this –_ this she knows. This anger. This fury. An eye for an eye, a blow for a blow. That’s how it goes, right?

Catra pauses, lightheaded, and forces her breathing to steady. Assess. It could be a trick. A dirty, underhanded trick that Shadow Weaver never hesitated to employ and that she wouldn’t put it past Hordak to use. It could be a ruse. See what she does if she thinks she’s been abandoned. That could be the real test: does she continue to recruit the magicats and come back to the Fright Zone, loyal as ever, or does she break? Does she assimilate?

It’s not the worst idea. Either way Hordak would win. Either way he’d either get more soldiers or he’d get rid of one who’s shown she’s capable of going against a direct order.  

Catra’s face twitches, her tail lashing. A laugh bubbles up but she presses it down. She’s being manipulated. Still. Thinking in terms of what they want from her even after they’ve thrown her out. But they can’t win. They don’t _get_ to win.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep, deep breath. One that goes to the bottom of her stomach. One that stretches her ribs out enough to hurt. Holds it, just to remind herself of the feeling of Hordak above her, his hands nowhere near her but still holding her life in them. She lets it out slowly. Feels every muscle relax. Rolls her shoulders. Breathes. Lets her mind go still.

When she opens her eyes the sun is lower in the sky. Sunset will be soon, and she’s got a while to go to get back to Kahi. Her Horde uniform feels tight, feels wrong, and she looks down at herself. It’s ripped in many places, mud and bloodstained. She touches her Force Captain Badge. Unclips it from her chest. Adora had wanted this so badly – had run herself ragged to achieve perfection so she could attain it. Catra scoffs, one hand tightening on the badge and the other wiping away the dried crust from tears.

She walks towards the cliffs. The glare from the ocean is nearly blinding as she steps out from the forest’s shadow. The wind is gentler but still harsher than she’s used to. It tugs at her, pulling her back, the scent of salt overwhelming. Her toes almost dangle from the cliff’s edge as she looks down. Waves crash up against the island, breaking on large rock formations that jut from the sea. Between the wind and the waves there’s nothing else for her to hear. The noise reminds her of the machinery littering Hordak’s castle but there’s something better about the rhythmic noise here. Something less oppressive, less heavy.

A younger version of Catra would be furious at herself – for letting herself be manipulated, for letting herself care, for letting herself think that she was more than just some pawn. She shakes her head. What’s done is done. The moves were made and the wounds were dealt. Now, it’s time to think of the next move, and the next, until she has what she wants.

Her lips curl over her teeth. She can deal with Adora and the Princesses later. What she needs to do is get back to the mainland and make Hordak _pay._ Make Shadow Weaver _pay._ She’s going to wrest the Horde from Hordak’s control and do some damage.

An eye for an eye. A hit for a hit. That’s how it goes, right?

She whips her arm back to throw the badge into the ocean when it beeps. A loud, piercing thing that makes her startle and back away from the cliff’s edge. She peers at the badge. A small red dot blinks in and out of existence at the bottom and she taps it. The badge clicks open. Her tracker, still online despite everything, but not activated. It looks different - as if someone had gone in and strengthened the datachip housing the homing signal. Where there was once just enough space to store an extra datachip there now isn’t.

There is, though, what appears to be a small switch to activate the signal. Catra blinks. She huffs out a strangled breath. This has Entrapta written all over it. Had she known about Hordak’s plan? Had it all been for show?

No, not for show – as much a punishment as it was an order. _Come back when you’ve learned to put your full trust in me._

 _I thought you were the clever one._ Shadow Weaver’s voice whispers unbidden in her ears.

She sucks in a sharp breath. Clever. She needs to be clever. If she’s proven herself in all the ways that matter, what is there left to prove?

The spot on her wrist twinges as she rubs at it, her heart thudding in her chest. She’d gotten here because she fell for Shadow Weaver’s tricks, yes, but also because she lied. And Hordak never was one to tolerate liars. But she’s also his best soldier, so he can’t be rid of her, not yet, right? 

Maybe her mission was never to convince the magicats to come back to the Horde with her. Maybe the point of all of this is to test her own loyalty – can she be loyal to the Horde when she thinks the Horde has left her for dead?

She grins hard enough her cheeks hurt. Finally, _finally,_ she has the upper hand. When she gets back to the Horde Hordak will think her contrite, will think she’s learned her lesson, will think she won’t stab him in the back.

The last thing he’ll expect is for her to come back to the Horde with a small army of magicats who want nothing more than to rip his throat out with their teeth.

That cracked thing in her chest aches but it’s dull, this time, it’s intensity softened by the badge in her hand. She reattaches it to her chest and grins, baring her teeth at the sea. A small part of her hopes that, far away, nestled in his lab, Hordak feels a shiver run down his spine. Because Hordak is many things, but he doesn’t waste resources. Catra has a high-tech homing beacon on her, which means he knows she’s going to use it, which means there’s no surveillance on her. No hidden bots, no Imp, no magical trails – nothing. Why track her when she’s stuck on an island and more than likely going to come back?

A mistake, on his part.

She turns her back on the sea, her shadow looming large before her, and for once she’s not wary of it. Shadow Weaver can’t get her here – the Horde can’t get her here.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

Catra follows the river downstream, stopping once to drink from it and wash her hands. As she walks she picks the slivers of wood from her hands and fingers, wincing at some that lodged themselves in her nail-beds. Getting her anger out on the trees always seemed like a good idea at the time, but it always ended up with bloody hands.

By the time the sun is setting she’s back at the small beach near her den. Kahi isn’t there, but there are scraps from their earlier debacle with the crocodile. Catra’s stomach growls loudly at the reminder of food and she sighs. Surely Kahi had cooked and saved some for her.

The smell of cooking meat greets her at the halfway mark between the river and the den. Her stomach growls again, insistent, and she picks up the pace, walking quickly over the grasses and undergrowth.

Catra pauses before entering the clearing before the den, watching. She knows Kahi knows she’s there – can see Kahi’s ears pointing in her direction. Kahi doesn’t look up from their task, though, waiting patiently for Catra to make herself known.

 Kahi’s started a fire and there’s meat roasting on a spit. Near one of the trees is a length of stretched out skin from the crocodile, assumedly drying. It looks as though Kahi has completely emptied their bag in the clearing, as various items litter the ground around them.

Catra steps into the clearing. “What are you doing?”

Kahi doesn’t look up. “Adding to my necklace,” they say.

Catra steps close and crouches behind Kahi, watching as they painstakingly carve a hole into the tooth taken from the crocodile. In their lap are also two claws from the beast, one looking as if it’s been carved.

Catra picks it up. “Why carve it?”

“To remember,” Kahi says.

Catra scoffs softly, tossing it back into Kahi’s lap. “As if anyone would be able to forget nearly being eaten by that thing.”

Kahi hums and sets their knife aside. “The meat should be done,” they say. “Come. Sit.”

They pat the space beside them but Catra ignores them, opting to sit on the other side of the fire.

Kahi, as ever, doesn’t say anything. Instead they begin removing the meat from the spit and placing it onto large leaves. They loosely tie one up before tossing it to Catra. Catra catches it and doesn’t wait for Kahi’s permission before stuffing a piece into her mouth. She doesn’t bother with waiting to taste it, ignoring the burning of her tongue as she scarfs it down.

Kahi’s eyes are soft and glittering with the firelight, a smile hanging onto the edges of their mouth. “Well?” they ask.

Catra stares into the fire, her tail twitching, heart heavy in her chest. “Beast Island.”

Kahi nods. “You understand, don’t you?” they ask, leaning forward a bit as if wanting to touch her.

 _More than I want to._ “The Horde abandoned me.”

Kahi shakes their head. “No,” they say, voice sharp, and Catra startles, dragging her eyes away from the flames. Kahi is staring at her, brows furrowed, and Catra forces herself not to flinch back. She’d known, of course, that Kahi was a warrior, but she’d only ever caught glimpses.

Here, though, with the fire lighting up their eyes and their hands still bloody from cleaning the crocodile, they’ve never looked more intimidating.

“No,” Kahi says again. “You weren’t abandoned. Being abandoned means they cared about you. They never did. You were used and discarded as if nothing more than a tool no longer worth the energy to upkeep.”

Catra shoves a piece of meat into her mouth, ducking her head so Kahi can’t see the tears brimming in her eyes. It’s stupid, she knows, to think Hordak ever cared for her. Even more so to think that Shadow Weaver did. She swallows.

“I tried,” she says, not looking up. “I tried so hard to get her to love me like she did Adora. And the one time I thought I finally earned her love –” Catra blinks back her tears, refusing to sniffle. If she focuses on the memory for more than a moment she’ll feel Shadow Weaver’s hand in her hair, cupping her cheek, welcoming and warm when Catra dared to press into the caress. She shivers.

“Love isn’t earned,” Kahi says. Catra lifts her eyes to look at Kahi – sees the pity written on their face and scoffs.

“Stop with the pity party,” she says, shoving another piece of meat into her mouth. “I don’t want it.”

 Kahi’s ears twitch and they cock their head to the side, brows furrowing. “It’s not pity, little one. It’s compassion.”

The intensity of Kahi’s stare is enough to make Catra look away. For a second all she can think about is Scorpia, because she’s seen that same look from the other girl, seen it sent in her direction more than a few times. She wonders, then, what Scorpia is up to. Has she gone on any missions? Has she tried to figure out where Catra is yet? Does she know what’s happened?

The fire crackles, shaking her from her thoughts. “What now?” she asks.

Kahi doesn’t answer. Instead they eat, their ears occasionally twitching. Night falls in earnest and the wind gets colder, pressing up against Catra’s skin. She ignores it as she eats. The meat is just as gamey as she suspected it would be but it’s good, too, and the tight coil in her chest unravels a bit with every bite.

She likes this. She likes eating something other than meal bars. Likes seeing the sky without squinting through smog. Likes being so close to trees and grass and rivers. A younger version of herself – a very young version – wanted nothing more than this. Before she really knew what the Horde was, she remembers missing trees. Remembers missing sunlight. Remembers missing grass.

Kahi leans back a bit, swiping an arm over their mouth. They meet Catra’s eyes, their gaze steady and sure as it always is, and speaks: “What do you want, Catra?”

It is, perhaps, the easiest question Catra has ever answered. “Revenge,” Catra says. “I want Shadow Weaver and Hordak dead.”

Kahi smiles, a sharp thing that Catra didn’t think them capable of. “No more loyalty to the Horde?”

Catra shakes her head. “I’m going to burn it to the ground,” she says. Pauses. There’s something she needs to do before she can continue. She spots the knife at Kahi’s side and gestures to it. “Can you toss me that?”

Kahi’s lack of hesitation makes something warm form in Catra’s chest, but she ignores it in favor of catching the knife they toss to her. It’s sharp, wickedly so, and Catra brings it up to her left ear first.

Kahi doesn’t even twitch. They watch, eyes narrowed, as Catra makes the first cut.

Catra’s hair has always been wild and untamable. Has always been prone to tangles and frizz. She’s never really cared. It’s clean, and that’s enough. No one ever touched her hair except for herself and, occasionally, Adora.

Shadow Weaver, though. Shadow Weaver would, when doling out rare praise, caress the light colored hair closest to her ears. Would, on even rarer occasions, tug on it. Catra thought it was from affection. And maybe, somewhere deep in Shadow Weaver’s twisted heart, it was affection. Really, though, it was an act. A way to sneak through Catra’s defenses. A way to make her _comply._

The sound of the blade cutting through hair is novel and daunting and lovely all at once. It only takes a few quick slices to cut away the light brown tufts. Catra holds them in her hand for a moment, staring. How many times had that simple touch been used against her? How many times had she let herself fall for the same trick?

She throws them into the fire. _No more._

The blade is cool against her skin and she relishes it. She cuts her right tuft away, tossing the hair into the fire without hesitation. Her hair burns quickly and within moments there’s no trace of it left. Catra breathes deeply to remind herself she can. Rolls her shoulders.

It’s not enough. She can still feel Shadow Weaver’s hands. Can still feel her fingers twisting in her hair. With deft movements she takes handfuls of her hair and begins cutting. Doesn’t try to make it look good, doesn’t try to make it even. She wants it gone. Wants it off. Wants no one to ever be able to grab a handful of her hair and use it to drag her down.

Part of her wants Kahi to look away. Wants to wait until Kahi is gone to do this. But the other part of her, the larger part, needs a witness. Needs someone to see this happening so that when she wakes up tomorrow she knows it was real. She doesn’t need to look at Kahi to know they’re watching, the weight of their gaze familiar after all this time.

Catra cuts. And cuts. And cuts. She tosses the handfuls of hair into the fire – doesn’t stop to ponder them, doesn’t stop to wonder what she’s doing. She just wants it gone, wants it off, wants it destroyed.

It’s over sooner than she expects it. Her shoulders ache from some of the angles, she’s panting, and her eyes sting with unshed tears. But her hair isn’t long anymore. It sits just at her chin, now. Haphazardly so, but it’s short enough that no one can grab her with her hair. No one can touch her hair without her knowing.

Catra breathes. Meets Kahi’s eyes over the fire and is unsurprised to see them watching calmly. She tosses the knife back to them.

She’s lighter than she’s felt in a long, long time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god okay but SEASON 4 IS SO SOON I CANT FUCKING WAIT and yes okay, yes i'm adding itty bitty bits and pieces of seasons 3 and 4 to this because i have no self control, okay, i don't have ANY self control 
> 
> jokes on all of y'all though i was always going to have a catra cutting her hair off scene bc i LOVE THAT SHIT


	15. overlap

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! thank as usual to my beta reader patheticfrog ilu
> 
> thanks to everyone who is still reading! i needed that little hiatus real bad, y'all don't even know. but! new year new chapter! 
> 
> told y'all that i wouldn't abandon this story! can't promise there'll be a decent updating schedule bc grad school is a bitch AND i'm having to work nearly full time while i'm at it so like. i'm an exhausted bitch

The light feeling in Catra’s chest sinks to her stomach the moment she enters the den that night. Her chest clenches and she breathes out a ragged breath, a tremble running through her body.

_This isn’t supposed to hurt,_ she thinks, making her way down the tunnel. The moons’ light streams through the crack in the ceiling, creating a stark shaft of light that she passes through to get to the hidden room. She slips between the rock walls and waits a moment for her vision to adjust, the shaft of moonslight weaker in the room than it is in the tunnel.

She swallows against the lump in her throat. “This shouldn’t hurt,” she whispers, flicking her tail. She expects, for one wild moment, to hear Scorpia’s voice, to feel her arms wrap around her in an effort to make her feel better. Her muscles tense in anticipation and when the hug doesn’t come she wraps her arms around herself.

Catra presses her back against the rock, letting the cold seep into her skin until she can convince herself her trembling is from the cold. She reaches up and touches her hair, so much shorter than it’s ever been, and feels the loss of it unfurl in her chest like a blooming flower.

Before she can sink into the feeling she shakes herself hard, pinching at that spot on her right wrist until her breathing steadies. She runs her fingers through her hair, straightening it. Then she makes her way to the haphazard bed, pulling the thin blanket over her shoulders and curling in on herself, her back to the wall.

_Get it together,_ she hisses.

Her dreams aren’t restful, too full of blood and desperation and come back _come back comebackcomebackcome –_

The cold wakes her and she curls tighter into herself, eyes sticky and tongue fuzzy in her mouth. Her limbs weigh too much, and she wants nothing more than to be back in her warm bed, the sounds of snoring lulling her to sleep, Adora’s shins pressed against her back.

But that’ll only ever be a memory, now.

Catra pulls herself up from the bed, letting her toes touch the floor. She sits, blinking, eyes idly following the runes around her. There’s nothing mechanical about the drawings. There are spots where the artist clearly changed their mind and began a path again, leaving a thin, abandoned line of black where the branch would have gone. The thin branches still end up connecting with the thicker, more purposeful ones, but they’re hurried, as if regretfully connected because they had to be.

She traces one such branch, the black line so thin it’s hardly visible, and the stone warms ever so slightly under her touch. An echo of a tingling sensation tries to set her fur on edge and fails. She sighs, taking her hand back, and stares at the lines around her until her vision goes fuzzy. Then she stares some more.

It’s a disastrous mix of what looks like First Ones writing and Shadow Weaver’s sigils. They loop around each other, crisscrossing and, at some points, almost violently meshing together in a mix of shapes that make Catra want to scratch them all out.  

Vision still blurry and eyes stinging, she goes to blink when one of the shapes blurs into something she recognizes.

She bares her teeth at it, the hiss instinctive and scraping at the back of her throat.

It’s a memory altering sigil. She knows it well. Had been threatened with it many times over the years, and had seen it in action against other cadets twice. The first time Shadow Weaver had forced her to watch as a threat – she hadn’t even bothered to stare at the screaming cadet. No, Shadow Weaver had kept her gaze on Catra, her shadows writhing, the promise clear: _this will happen to you one day._

The second time she’d seen it was by accident – a misadventure in the air vents when she’d been trying to sneak into the kitchens. The ghost of the grate pressing in on her face makes Catra’s fur stand on end. It’d been bloodier, the second time. The cadet had tried to fight it but the more they fought against it the more their nose began to bleed, then their ears, until finally their head lolled to the side.

They hadn’t screamed, not really – their neck muscles bulged with the effort it took to stay quiet, their jaw clenched so hard Catra could feel her own ache in response. Their teeth were bared, sweat dripping from their forehead. Despite the cadet’s iron will a near constant, high, painful whine slipped through their teeth and haunted Catra for weeks.

And she’d left Adora to face that, fully knowing that Adora would resist because she _never_ backed down from a fight, even a mental one. Adora never knew when to stop, never knew when to call in a graceful retreat.

And Catra had left her tied to that chair knowing the inevitable outcome.

Catra blinks, considering. It had made sense at the time. If Adora couldn’t remember all of the Princess nonsense then everything would go back to normal. They could be together again and this time Catra would be more careful. No more visits to the Whispering Woods. No more talk of Princesses except for necessity’s sake. It would have been her and Adora against the world, just like it had always been.

There’d been a sort of vindictive pleasure at seeing Adora helpless like that, though. The hero brought to her knees. Finally getting a taste of what Catra had been feeling for years. Did Adora’s chest tighten the way Catra’s does? Did her breath stutter? Did her stomach sink? Did some small part of her beg for mercy she knew wouldn’t come?

Questions. So many questions. So many things she wants to ask Adora, so many things she wants to say. But what can be said that hasn’t already? Another rehash of the same argument, so well-worn that Catra can recite every iteration in her sleep.

_I didn’t leave you, I left the Horde!_ Adora’s voice echoes softly in her ears and Catra can’t help but snort, her heart aching.

_You left me, too,_ she thinks, eyes stinging. Blinking hard, she takes a deep breath, peering at the shapes around her. Memory altering sigils don’t bode well, and having one in her den makes her skin crawl. She half expects to see the lines move and for Shadow Weaver to appear a moment later, eyes narrowed and magic at the ready.

Can the sigils be activated by the artist from a distance? Can they be activated by a non-magic user? Is she in danger of accidentally activating them? With the way the lines crisscross, are the sigils even _able_ to be activated, or have the lines deactivated them? Catra rubs the spot on her wrist. There’s always the possibility that the myriad of lines and the mixing of sigils and First Ones’ language is meant to amplify the runes’ power. But the writing and runes she’s seen have always been neat – nothing like this scrawl.

Catra sighs. There’s no use worrying about this now. There’s too little information to go on and too many variables she can’t control. There’ll be time to worry on this later tonight. But there’s something about them that she can’t quite let go. Standing, she crosses the width of the small room, stepping over the remnants of the fire pit, and presses her fingertips into one of the thicker lines.

The tingling is immediate, crawling up her arm in a methodical, unhurried way. It reminds her of Rogelio when he becomes engrossed in building one of his models, each movement slow and precise, with the end result being a perfect miniature replica of whatever machine model he’d managed to find.

The sensation makes her fur stand on end but she keeps her fingertips pressed into the thick line, grimacing as the tingling intensifies. Her skin grows warm and she blinks hard as movement in her peripheral vision catches her attention. The movement stops the moment she looks at the wall closest to the entryway so she keeps her gaze fixed on her hand as the tingling begins moving past her elbow.

The lines in her peripheral begin to move – slow, undulating movements that remind her of Salineas’ ocean, the waves beating a steady rhythm against the shore.

As focused as she is on her periphery, she nearly misses the way the line she’s touching pulses, the blackness of it becoming something tangible, ebbing its way onto her fingertips. The tingling sensation crests over her shoulder and she gasps as a pulse of heat flashes through her arm. Yanking her hand away she hisses, nearly swiping at the wall when the blackness of it seems to reach for her before adhering to the wall again and falling still once more.

Her breath is loud in the sudden quiet, her skin and ears buzzing. The cold, still lingering from the night, settles back into her and she shivers with it, rubbing her arms despite the uncomfortable feeling of her fur being brushed the wrong way. Too much. It’s too much like Shadow Weaver, too much like the Horde, and she squeezes through the entryway before she realizes she’s moving.

She pauses in the tunnel, tilting her face up towards the crack in the ceiling, closing her eyes as the first rays of sunlight begin to warm her. There’s a thrum in the air that rubs up against her skin, half comforting and half worrying. It reminds her of –

A freezing bolt of panic races through her and she stills, sucking in a sharp breath. The memory sigil. Had she forgotten anything? Had she activated the spell? Had she –

Catra closes her eyes and thinks, going over the past few days. She’d paid enough attention to Shadow Weaver’s lectures to know that a memory spell takes time. Even a powerful one would need more than the few seconds she was in contact with it to fully erase anything. The only fuzzy spots in her memory are the ones she expects to be there and the relief that washes through her is so strong she nearly sinks to the floor.

She can’t afford magic’s unpredictability. Not now.

_Okay,_ she thinks. _I can work with this. If I don’t touch them I’ll be fine._ Then she barks out a laugh. No wonder the sleeping nook didn’t have any sigils.

She takes a deep breath, scenting – fresh, leafy air intermingled with the mustier air of the den, the scent weighing heavy on her tongue. It still smells off to her, like it belongs to someone else. There’s a hazy scent intermingled with it this time though, one that she’s familiar with but not enough so to name it. Her tail flicks. She’s smelled it before, she knows she has, but the more she tries to remember the less sure she is.

Her lips twitch into a snarl. Maybe her memory was affected after all.

Opening her eyes, she walks towards the entrance and hesitates at the threshold of the den, peering through the leaves, hoping to spot Kahi before the magicat wants to be spotted. Her gaze focuses on the treetops, branches swaying in the wind, searching for any hiccup of movement or shadow that would give Kahi away.

There isn’t any. Had they left? Catra takes a deep breath against the hurt beginning to curl in her gut. It shouldn’t hurt. _None_ of this should hurt. She’d shown too much emotion last night and now Kahi was gone and that was fine. Expected, really. They’d probably gone back to the main camp and given away her location and having a laugh at her expense. She needs to leave. Needs to figure out a new place to hide, needs to –

Kahi appears silently, melting away from the treetops like a fish gliding through water, and Catra’s throat tightens.

“You came back,” Catra says, stepping out from the shelter of her den.

Kahi blinks, their ears twitching. “I never left. Why would I?”

_Because everyone leaves._

Catra shrugs. “Don’t you have anything better to do than hang around?”

Kahi shakes their head. “No,” they say, sitting down at the bottom of the rock pile that leads to the den’s entrance. They settle with their back to Catra but their ears are trained on her, their tail flicking lazily.

“Come and sit with me,” they say.

Catra scoffs. “I’ve got more important things to do than watch the grass grow,” she says. If she’s going to get off Beast Island she needs to figure out a plan, needs to figure out where the main magicat camp is, needs to figure out how she’s going to gain their trust, needs to –

Kahi hums. “Patience, little one.”

“Don’t call me that,” Catra snarls, moving down the rock pile and brushing past Kahi. She halfway expects Kahi to stop her, muscles already tensing in preparation, but no hit comes. When she’s firmly out of grabbing reach she turns, a sharp comment on her tongue, and blinks.

Kahi’s eyes are closed, their hands folded in their lap, their shoulders relaxed. Catra would think them asleep if it weren’t for the near constant movement of their ears and twitching of their nose.

“Sit with me,” Kahi says again, patting the sunny patch of grass next to them.

Catra crosses her arms and weighs her options. She’s not exactly on a time crunch, and keeping Kahi next to her means Kahi can’t get the drop on her. Not that she thinks Kahi would, but she’d thought the same of Adora not too long ago. Better to be safe than sorry these days.

She huffs and sits, ignoring the slight smirk on Kahi’s face as she does so. “Now what?”

“Close your eyes,” Kahi says, “and listen.”

Catra does so, her hands stripping the grass in front of her. “And what’s this supposed to do? Make me fall asleep? Not sure if you’ve noticed but I’ve got better things to do than –”

“You ought to pay more attention,” Kahi says, their voice right up against Catra’s ear, and Catra jumps, swiping out on instinct.

Kahi catches her wrist, an unimpressed look on their face. “If I were an enemy you would be dead.”

Catra bristles. “If you were an enemy I wouldn’t be sitting around with my eyes closed.”

Kahi’s gaze goes sharp, and Catra can feel the familiar weight of their assessment settling onto her shoulders. Her fur fluffs up and she takes a deep, quiet breath. Another test, then. Another set of aspirations she’ll need to live up to. She stands.

“The Horde trained you,” Kahi says, “and they trained you like they would any human. But you’re not human. You’re a magicat.”

Catra’s chest tightens, dread pooling in her stomach. “I was one of the best cadets they had. The best Force Captain. I came closer than anyone to conquering Bright Moon and defeating the Rebellion. I’m not an animal.”

“I never said you were,” Kahi says, something soft entering their gaze. “You’ve done well with the training you’ve been given. You’ve gotten this far because you managed to put your own twist on the Horde’s training. No one quite knew how to respond to that, I’m guessing.”

_No one but Adora,_ Catra thinks, her hands tightening on her hips.

Kahi continues. “Against another magicat, though, your weaknesses become more apparent than ever.”

Catra barks out a laugh. “Tell that to Lyra.”

“Lyra let her own anger blind her. There was luck involved. Had she been less angry and you less lucky, you’d be dead.”

Catra bares her teeth as Kahi stands. “And what’s blinding you? If you were smart you’d turn me into Lyra and Sati right now.” Kahi opens their mouth to speak but Catra continues. “I’ve got nothing to give you.”

Kahi tilts their head to the side. “I don’t want anything from you.”

Catra snorts. “Listen. I’ve done this before. You’re going to offer to teach me something, right? Like that trick of disappearing into the treetops or whatever,” Catra says, crossing her arms, “and then you’re going to ask something of me, and whether I do it or not you’re going to screw me over.” Catra laughs, the smile heavy on her face. “So let’s save each other some time and cut to the chase.”

Catra watches Kahi grow tenser with every word, cataloging the twitch of their lips and the way their tail begins to lash. It’s easier this way, to goad them until they leave. Then at least Catra has no one to blame but herself, and at least this time she’ll know exactly what she’s done to make them go.

She’ll go to the mountains once Kahi leaves. See what the wizard is up to. See if she can figure out some sort of strategy to gain his trust, because it’ll be easier to go against Shadow Weaver with a wizard but if that plan falls through she doesn’t need him, she’s dealt with Shadow Weaver before, she can –

“What will it take to convince you of my loyalty?” Kahi asks, their voice hard but their eyes soft.

_More than a flimsy promise, that’s for sure._ “What’s your goal?” Catra asks.

Kahi doesn’t hesitate. “I want to help you.”

“Why?”

A slight pause. “I made a promise, long ago. I intend to keep it.”

_Oh?_ “To who?”

Kahi shakes their head. “It doesn’t matter.”

_Gotcha._ “Really?” Catra asks, inspecting her claws. “Because if I didn’t know any better, I’d say people only make promises to people they really care about. People who _matter._ ”

Kahi’s ears twitch but otherwise they stare unflinchingly at Catra. “It’s not something I can tell you about.”

“Why?” Catra asks, squinting. “Seems to me the only person you answer to is Sati. If your loyalty is split between Sati and this other person, how can I expect you to have my back?”

Kahi’s face is unreadable. “The Horde works in teams. Are you saying you only ever trusted your Captain but not the rest of your team?”

Catra can’t help the full body twitch or the way her tail lashes so hard it almost hurts. “Don’t bring them into this.”

“Loyalty isn’t either/or, little one. You know that.”

“Then who?” Catra spits. “Who did you make that promise to?”

Kahi’s gaze is sharp, piercing through Catra. “They’re long dead. It doesn’t matter.”

Most of the protests die on Catra’s tongue, but she’s never been one to quit while she’s ahead. “Who?”

Kahi takes a deep breath. “I need you to trust me when I say it doesn’t matter.”

Catra pauses. She could trust Kahi, maybe. Could give them an olive branch, at least. Could pretend to trust them and use them. The person they made that promise to is dead. They don’t matter, not really, but the last time she left stones unturned it ended with Hordak nearly killing her. She can’t trust anyone. She can’t care about anyone. It’s what got her here in the first place – she can’t let it have power over her again.

“Kahi,” she says, voice hard, “who did you promise?”

For once, the growl isn’t hers. Kahi’s growl sends a shiver down Catra’s spine, and for a split second she regrets saying anything at all because Kahi doesn’t look like Kahi anymore. Gone is the patience, the kindness, the calmness. In front of her Kahi is every inch a warrior, every inch a soldier that’s seen battles they’ve never talked about.

Catra knows that look, has seen it on older cadets. That look is every inch as dangerous as it says it is.

“It’s not important,” Kahi says, their voice flat. “Leave it alone.”

Catra shakes her head. “No,” she says, and before she registers her own movement she’s lashing out, striking for Kahi’s face, heart pounding against her chest and –

She’s in over her head.

Kahi blocks her move with ease and kicks out their leg, sweeping Catra’s legs out from under and and sending her to the ground. Catra lands on her back and before she can do anything Kahi is on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

Catra snarls, struggling, but Kahi’s got her immobilized, their claws digging into her arms hard enough to bruise but not draw blood. She stills, closing her eyes, and waits for the blow. It doesn’t come.

“What are you waiting for?” she spits, opening her eyes and staring at Kahi. “Hit me already.”

But Kahi is staring at her, green eyes wide, their ears pressed agains their head. Their mouth opens and closes like a dying fish and, moving faster than Catra thought possible, Kahi is pulling her up as they stand, their hands already moving over her to check for injuries.

“I’m so sorry,” they say, every trace of anger gone. “I shouldn’t have –”

Catra bats their hands away. “Whoa, hold on, I’m the one that attacked you,” she says, tail flicking. “Why are you apologizing to me?”

“Not just to you,” Kahi says, taking a deep, shuddering breath, “but to her.”

Catra sighs. “Yeah, well, apology accepted, or whatever,” she says, ignoring Kahi’s grateful look. “If you really want to help me tell, you’ll tell me what’s going on.”

Kahi hesitates. “I don’t know where to start.”

“Who made you promise to help me?”

Kahi exhales sharply. “I already told you –”

“That you promised not to tell, yeah, I got that,” Catra says, “but she’s dead and keeping her a secret isn’t helping anyone. It’s not like she’s going to punish you if you tell me.”

Kahi visibly grits their teeth, all tense lines and fluffing fur. “There’s a lot you still don’t know that -”

“Then _tell me,_ ” Catra says. “If we’re going to be allies, we need to come clean to each other.”

Kahi keeps their mouth closed and stares into the trees. Catra sighs. _As if a closed mouth could stop me._ Still, she’ll need to be careful. She can’t take Kahi in a fight, that much is clear, and she needs Kahi on her side.

The idea hits Catra so hard she curses, huffing out a breath. It’s a risk, but what isn’t a risk these days?

“Ask me something?” Catra says.

Kahi looks at her. “What?”

“A trade. You ask me anything you want to know and I’ll answer, and then you can tell me who you promised.”

Kahi’s ears twitch. “I’ll still be breaking my word.”

Catra nods. “Yeah, but when I was initiated as a cadet we swore loyalty to Hordak and the Horde, promising that we would take our own life before divulging any information about the Horde to the Princesses. This way we’re both breaking our word.” That you actually care about breaking a promise to whoever you promised and I don’t care about the Horde anymore is beside the point.

Kahi frowns, thinking it over, but nods. “Alright,” they say. “And I can ask anything?”

Catra nods again. “Anything.”

They don’t hesitate. “Were you treated well in the Horde?”

“What does that have to do with –”

“Answer the question.”

“Fine,” Catra huffs, looking away. She crosses her arms over her chest. “It wasn’t the worst, but it could’ve been better. I only went hungry a few times, and after awhile Shadow Weaver’s punishments got –”

“Punishments?”

“Yeah, the usual stuff,” Catra says, trying to keep her tone light. “Threatening bodily harm, usually following through. Threatening mental harm, usually following through. A bit rougher than what the other cadets would get because I was her charge but nothing I couldn’t handle.” The words escape her in a rush, humiliation creeping along her skin and making her duck her head so Kahi wouldn’t see her blush. The anger, though muted, is familiar and she wraps herself in it, her hands tightening to fists, her claws nearly drawing blood from her palms.

She’s going to kill Shadow Weaver one day. Going to rip that mask off and crush it under her feet. Going to rip her chest open and sink her claws into the witch’s heart – if she has one. She’ll burn the body and dance on the ashes. And when all is said and done she’ll go through all the documents and terminals of the Horde and erase Shadow Weaver for good, wiping her from the system until it will be as if she never existed.

Shadow Weaver will be remembered, but not for long. There will be no legacy, no legend, nothing.

Catra’s so caught up in her thoughts that she jumps when she’s pulled into Kahi, their arms wrapping around her shoulders.

“I’m so sorry,” Kahi says, their voice strangled. “I failed her. I failed you.”

It takes every ounce of Catra’s self control not to push Kahi away. She doesn’t hug back. Instead she stands as still as possible, forcing herself not to melt into the embrace. Kahi smells like dirt and sap and flowers, but mostly of warmth. They smell like something Catra should know but can’t remember, and it makes her skin crawl in the best and worst way.

“What are –”

Kahi pulls back but their hands stay on Catra’s shoulders, their weight comforting. “I promised her I would look after you and I failed,” they say, their ears pressed against their head.

Catra leans forward, her ears beginning to ring, her heart beating hard. “Who?” she asks, voice ragged. “Who did you promise?

Kahi flails for a moment, their mouth opening and closing as they find their voice. “Your sister,” they say, soft and rough at first. “I promised your sister,” they repeat, closing their eyes.

Catra reels back, sucking a sharp breath. The ringing in her ears crests until she can’t hear anything but her pulse, her heart pounding against her ribcage. A sister. A _sister._ She blinks. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing feels real. She feels like she’s watching herself from within her own body, feeling too much and too little all at once. “You knew my sister?” she says, unable to stop herself.

Kahi sighs, a long, deep exhale that seems to hollow them out. Their green eyes are flat when they meet Catra’s gaze. “I didn’t just know her, little one, I loved her.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's entirely possible that the thought of catra having a sister has plagued me since before i even started writing this story and ohmyGOD CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE NEWEST SEASON OF SPOP PLEASE I STILL HAVEN'T FUCKING RECOVERED!!!! FUCKING BEAST ISLAND!!!!! FUCKING MICAH!!!! FUCKING EVERYOTHGING FAKJLSDFHKJSDFJK


	16. Interlude: Grin Sharp Enough to Cut

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey y'all! as ever, quick thanks to my data reader patheticfrog
> 
> these interludes really just keep getting longer huh? hopefully the next chapters come a bit quicker but, as ever, no promises 
> 
> enjoy!

Adora shuts herself down.

It’s the only way to function, really, and for all of the Horde’s faults, they made sure their soldiers knew how to function under extreme pressure.

And Adora’s always been a good soldier.

With a cool efficiency that surprises her, she separates the bits of her mind that threaten to crumble under the weight of Catra’s death, corralling them behind a concrete wall in her mind and shutting them down.

She wonders if Catra had done the same, after she left – had systematically burnt off bits of herself so the deep-drilling ache wouldn’t spread so quickly. Wonders if she, too, had let the rage in the pit of her stomach fill up the empty, cavernous spaces left behind by the aching. Wonders if Catra had taken her rage and wrapped it around herself like a blanket, burrowing in deep.

Adora thinks that she did. Remembers how Catra had a blue blanket that she loved best, remembers how, even when they were young, Catra would hide beneath its threadbare shelter and hide from the world. Remembers hiding under it with her, the cloying heat, the shared breath, Catra’s eyes so large in the dim light, always looking, always searching.

Adora spent hours in front of her cracked mirror, smiling and laughing and making sure the wild, glinting thing that had made a home behind her eyes was sufficiently concealed. It glowed, sometimes, when she let it spread through her body, dipping into She-Ra’s vast ocean of power and brimming under her skin, desperate and whining and _urging._

It wants out. _Adora_ wants out. Wants nothing more than to unleash herself on the Horde, uncaring and uninhibited. When she smiles to herself in the mirror, her blue eyes sparking, her hair in disarray, she looks more and more like something caged and pacing.

She’s never been more tentative of She-Ra’s powers. But she’s also never _wanted_ them so badly.  

She reigns herself in. Keeps her rage and She-Ra’s powers as separate as she can. How many times can she compartmentalize the different pieces of herself before they slam back together like a thinly-stretched rubber band? She doesn’t think too hard about it. Instead keeps practicing her smiles.

Glimmer finds her before she is ready, appearing on her balcony one night in a shower of sparkles.

“Adora!” Glimmer whisper-yells, nearly tackling Adora to the ground with the force of her hug. “I missed you.”

It takes every ounce of Adora’s willpower not to push her off. Skin crawling, she smiles. Nothing like immediate need to perfect a mask. Adora returns her hug, holding her close, ignoring the way her heart beats hard against her chest, the way her skin feels too tight.

After a few moments Glimmer releases her, eyes widening. “Your hair!” She gasps. “Your clothes!” Then she looks around, excitement dimming. “Your room.”

She hadn’t bothered to clean her room. Hadn’t bothered to cover up the piles of datapads or the shards of broken mirror. Hadn’t bothered to pick up her Horde uniform and throw it into the trash, mostly because she’s planning on burning it. Her bed is unmade and she can’t remember the last time she showered or ate.

Glimmer’s enthusiasm disappears, brows crinkling, and her gaze settles on Adora. “Adora, what’s wrong? What happened?”

Now is the moment she should tell Glimmer everything, should tell her about Catra’s death and Lonnie’s message, but she doesn’t. Glimmer would comfort her, would try to make her feel better, but she wouldn’t mean it – Catra’s death is _advantageous_ for the Rebellion. Something to be exploited. Something to be _used._

It’s the last thing Adora wants. Let this opportunity for the Rebellion to strike a blow against the Horde slip away. She doesn’t want it. Surely just this once she can be selfish, because the only thing that can come of this is her charging across the battlefield because Catra’s death has been twisted to make it look like revenge.

She’s going to avenge Catra. There’s no doubt about that. But not with people who never cared about her in the first place.

Besides, there are other plans at play.

Adora shrugs. “I got a little stir-crazy, that’s all.”

Glimmer purses her lips. “This doesn’t look like stir-crazy to me, and trust me, I know the feeling.”

Adora shrugs again. “I guess my stir-crazy is different from yours,” she says, moving towards the balcony in hopes that Glimmer won’t wander towards her desk.

Glimmer doesn’t take the bait. Instead she advances on the desk and Adora doesn’t think, doesn’t bother to keep whatever sliver of mask she’s wearing in place – she all but runs to intercept Glimmer, pulling her away from the desk.

“Why don’t we go see Bow?” she asks, tugging on Glimmer’s wrist, gesturing for the balcony. “I bet he’s as restless as we are.” She smiles but it feels too flat on her face.

Glimmer squints at her, pulling slightly against Adora’s hold, and Adora lets her go. “Adora,” Glimmer says, voice steady but hedging on hesitant. “What’s wrong?”

Adora shakes her head, scratching the back of her neck. “Nothing. Like I said, just a bit stir-crazy.”

Glimmer’s brows raise and she takes a step towards the desk. “Whatever it is I can help, you know.”

“You can’t help with that,” Adora says, moving to shield the desk from Glimmer’s eyes, pinning her with a stare.

Glimmer frowns. “Try me.”

“No.”

Glimmer groans, an angry thing that makes something in Adora’s chest want to snarl back. “Don’t you trust me?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Adora says, words sharp on her tongue. “Aren’t I allowed one private thing? Haven’t I proven myself enough?”

Glimmer throws her hands up into the air. “Just tell me what’s going on Adora!”

She’s gritting her teeth hard enough for her jaw to hurt. “No.”

Glimmer groans again and in an instant she’s behind Adora, grabbing something from the desk. It’s small enough to disappear in her fist and Adora’s heart leaps into her throat.

The datachip.

Adora reacts, whipping out a hand and grabbing Glimmer’s wrist hard enough to make her shout – whether in surprise or pain Adora can’t say because she’s still moving, snatching the datachip while pushing Glimmer away from the desk.

“Back off,” Adora snarls, pressing the datachip to her chest. Her heart beats hard against her ribs and she can feel her palms begin to sweat, her pulse growing louder with each second.

“What is your _problem_?” Glimmer yells, glaring at Adora as she slowly rotates her wrist. “You haven’t acted like this since –” and Glimmer’s mouth closes with an audible _snap._

“Since I was a Horde soldier?” Adora finishes. She needs Glimmer to leave, needs her to go _right now_ before either of them do something they’ll really regret. “I told you I don’t want your help,” Adora says, shifting her weight so that she can dodge a blow if needed.

Not that Glimmer would attack her, but old habits die hard.

Glimmer gestures wildly again, aimless. “If you’re going to go and find Shadow Weaver you don’t have to, I –”

 Something in Adora snaps. “Get out.”

Glimmer blinks. “What?”

“I said get out.”

“But –”

“No,” Adora snaps. “I don’t want you here, Glimmer. Leave me alone.”

Glimmer ducks her head, her hands fists at her waist. “Don’t you trust me?” she asks, and Adora can hear the lump in her throat.

Not with this. Not with Catra’s death. Not with the rage bubbling up in Adora’s belly. Because despite it all – the triumphs, the challenges, the deafeats they’ve faced together – at the end of the day Adora is a weapon. She’s She-Ra. Her purpose is to go wherever Angella and Glimmer tell her to go, wherever she can be the most useful.

She grits her teeth and lets the silence stretch. Watches as Glimmer’s eyes grow wide, as her mouth parts and she sways back, hurt etching itself across her face.

The ache brimming in Adora’s heart is barely a pinprick now.

Glimmer swallows, stepping back. “I thought we were friends.”

“We are,” Adora says. “But there are things I can’t tell you.”

Glimmer’s eyes narrow. “Can’t or won’t?” At Adora’s silence Glimmer shakes her head. “I thought you were better than this.” 

Adora lets out a sharp breath. “You said it yourself: you can’t trust people from the Horde.”

Glimmer makes a wounded noise, eyes big and watery. Between one blink and the next she’s gone in a small shower of sparkles and the quiet is so loud it leaves Adora’s ear ringing.

She blows out a breath, something from the depths of her belly, and forces herself to unclench her muscles. Slowly puts the datachip back on her desk and methodically shoves the pang of hurt at Glimmer’s face away.

She doesn’t have time to worry about anyone right now. Doesn’t have the space to.

Adora walks over to the balcony and closes her eyes, gripping the balcony’s rail hard enough to make her fingers hurt. Part of her keeps expecting Catra to show up one night with that infuriating smirk of hers, some sharp quip about the state of Bright Moon’s security rolling off of her tongue. She keeps expectiong to hear Catra’s voice behind her – listens for it, hoping without hope that the familiar _Hey, Adora_ will float from the Whispering Woods or the castle’s sloping eaves and settle around her like a vice, like a hug, like everything familiar and unfamiliar.

Scorpia needs to be contacted. Adora needs to finish setting up the line of communication, needs to know what’s going on in the Horde, needs to –

But she doesn’t.

Not because she doesn’t want to, or because she thinks that it’s a trap. She may not know Scorpia, but Adora’s known Lonnie all of her life. Lonnie isn’t cruel enough to bait her with Catra’s death. A plan like that fits better with Shadow Weaver’s manipulations than anyone else’s.

Days have passed since that night with Lonnie – weeks, maybe. She’s not keeping track. She floats through time like she’s back in the deep, warm springs on Mystacor, the water lapping at her body. Most things are fuzzy. Sometimes she’ll find herself running her thumbnail across the pads of her fingers to remember what sensation feels like.

Days pass. Nights. She spends them planning, prepping, trying to puzzle out variables.

She doesn’t contact Scorpia. Contacting her would make it real, would make it all so _real_ and she doesn’t want her protective bubble popped yet, doesn’t want the tiny part of her that believes it’s all a trick to disappear yet.

Again and again she finds herself on the balcony. She takes a deep, steadying breath, listening to the birds. Though dawn, the castle never really sleeps, and Adora idly watches the guards’ rotating shifts, the early-morning bread delivery, the stable workers as they tend to the horses. Tracks the people’s movements because if she lets her mind wander it will go, inevitably, to Catra.

Catra, who is gone. Catra, who is _dead,_ and the very thought still punches the breath from Adora’s lungs, still leaves her bereft in a way she never knew she could be. It numbs her more than anything else, creeping along her bones and curling around an iron-hot pit in her stomach. Not for the first time she wonders if this is how Catra felt when she’d left the Horde – angry, so angry she didn’t know what to do with herself, so angry that –

She-Ra’s powers, vast and oceanic, bubble up and she trembles, gritting her teeth against the swelling tide of it. It takes a few deep breaths but within moments she’s in control again, eyes casing the area for anyone who might have seen. It’s been happening more often, these surges, often enough that Adora knows her eyes _glow_ when She-Ra’s powers threaten to overwhelm her – not so much a transformation as a faulty leak.

There’s always the possibility that Adora’s going to be double crossed. Though there’s no doubt in her mind that this isn’t serious, she needs to keep her options open. She knows Lonnie but she doesn’t know Scorpia. They’d barely had any interaction while Adora was in the Horde apart from a few appreciative nods to each other’s strength and the one time Scorpia had caught her in a hug for something.

She wishes, more than anything, for more information. She’s trained to deal with changing variables but having some sort of bare-bones plan going into anything is better than having nothing. So she plans. Days spent plotting out the possibilities of rebellion from within the Horde – would something overt and dramatic work better than something quiet and subtle? How many cadets and higher-ups would be willing to turn their backs against Hordak, and out of those, who would be willing to _fight?_

She doesn’t know everyone in the Fright Zone. With a population in the thousands it would be insane for her to know them all. But percentages would be nice. Estimations of how many people sympathize with the Rebellion or are so dissatisfied with Hordak’s rule that they’d rebel would be helpful, at least.

Then there’s the Rebellion. There’s Angella and Glimmer and Bow. There’s the guards and the civilians and the other Princesses. How long will it take to convince them that the rebellion Scorpia and Lonnie are spearheading isn’t some elaborate trick? Mermista is still, understandably, upset about the damage Catra and Scorpia wrought on her kingdom – would she be willing to set aside her grievances long enough to join forces?

Not to mention Angella herself, and everyone who lost someone in the first battles of the Rebellion. Would they even listen to her?

Moreover, if enough people from the Horde defect, how will the Rebellion deal with them?

She knows that the worst things the Rebellion could do – the things that the Horde convinced her they would do – won’t happen. There’s a good chance no average soldier will be taken prisoner, and nothing in Bright Moon has lead her to believe any defect of the Horde would be killed or contained for the rest of their lives.

Adora sighs. Then, of course, there’s _after._ Once Hordak is dead, it’s likely Bright Moon will still want someone to blame. On whose shoulders would the blame fall? Scorpia and Lonnie, despite their willingness to rebel? Other people from the Fright Zone who chose to do nothing?

There’s nothing she’ll be able to do about the whispers, the glares, and the suspicion that will inevitably follow anyone from the Horde. Even now she still occasionally gets the odd, guarded glance. But she needs to know that, at the very least, her squad won’t be free of the Horde just to become the Rebellion’s prisoners.

Adora turns away from the balcony and into her room. Exhaustion simmers beneath her skin but she pushes through it, running her eyes over the datapads and papers scattered across her desk, the floor, her bed.

Lonnie’s ‘option’ had been short and precise, much like Lonnie herself: _Contact Scorpia. We’re rebelling._

Adora’d spent far too much time reading the simple message, trying to decipher the message between the lines. There wasn’t any, of course – Lonnie is too direct and Scorpia, from what little she knows, isn’t one for subversion.

Which makes their attempt at rebellion that much more dangerous.

Still, Adora doesn’t contact Scopria.

Adora settles on her side, staring blankly into the darkness of her room, watching the way the moons light filters through her gauzy curtains, and closes her eyes. When she opens them again she knows she’s dreaming but she doesn’t care because Catra is there, right beside her in the bed, looking at her as if nothing had changed between them.

Adora doesn’t talk. Can’t. The lump in her throat is too large.

Catra blinks at her, yellow-blue eyes glowing faintly in the low light. “Hey, Adora.”

Adora exhales as if she’s been hit but the pain doesn’t come, doesn’t shock her awake. She relaxes further into her bed, not saying anything.

When they were younger they’d lie face to face like this and talk before lights out. Usually gossip or trying to figure out a problem – their favorite was planning out the next time they’d raid the kitchens or the next prank to play on Octavia. Other times, though, too weary from the day’s training, they’d bask in each other’s presence.

Adora soaks in Catra’s warmth, her scent, the way her ears flick every once in a while. Catra’s tail rests on Adora’s hip, a steady line of warmth that makes Adora ache. There’s so much she could say, so much she _should_ say, but it doesn’t matter because this isn’t Catra, not really.

Between one blink and the next she’s awake and Catra is gone. Adora reaches out a hand to the other side of her bed to be sure and finds it cold and unrumpled.

She sighs.

By the time Angella releases her from her punishment she already has an excuse for the mirror, is already saying that _I was practicing with the sword and didn’t watch myself._ Already has an excuse for why she finally opened the closet in her room and took out the clothes, saying _I should have done this sooner, I don’t want anything to do with the Horde._ Already has an excuse for her hair, just in case, saying _I wanted something different_ because she’s not of the Horde anymore. No part of her is.

Angella looks at her, her gaze piercing, and Adora meets it head on. Hopes that the new clothes and her untied hair will be enough to distract the queen from the glint in her eyes she _knows_ she still can’t quite hide.

A chill runs down her side. She couldn’t fool Glimmer – how can she expect to fool Angella?

But Angella doesn’t say anything, and after another moment she and her guards are walking down the hall, and Adora pauses in the doorway of her room, considering. She should go outside. She should train. She should look for Glimmer. She should figure out if the Horde is up to anything. She should find Shadow Weaver.

Before she can do anything, though, Bow is at the other end of the hall, waving, pelting towards her.

“Adora!” he shouts, arms open and flinging himself around her. “It’s been forever,” he says, giving her a tight hug.

Her skin crawls but she returns it, smiling. “Good to see you, Bow. How are your fathers?”

Bow groans, shoulders slouching. “They keep telling me that they’re proud of me but also making it _extremely_ clear that if I want to quit the Rebellion I can.”

Adora hums and closes the door to her room. “They worry. It means they care.”

Bow grins. “I know. I’ve been working on something for them as an apology for lying to them so long.” He gives her a look. “How have _you_ been. I see there’s been a wardrobe change.”

Adora shrugs. “I needed something different.”

Bow gives her a look. “Are you sure you’re okay? Because you seemed pretty attached to that uniform despite, well,” he trails off, not meeting her gaze.

“Yeah, definitely,” Adora says too quickly, internally flinching when the concerned look on Bow’s face grows more pronounced. “I just…”

She can’t tell him about Catra. Can’t tell _anyone_ about Catra, because they wouldn’t mourn her. They’d probably celebrate somewhere out of her earshot, probably raise a glass in relief that one of their greatest enemies is gone. And she can’t blame them for it, not really, because they never knew Catra outside of an enemy – Adora hadn’t talked about her, had kept the Catra she knew close against her chest.

What else was she supposed to do, when the few times she tried to talk about the Horde and Catra she was met with pitying looks and _don’t worry, you’re safe now_ and _you’ll never have to go back_ and _don’t you want to help us defeat them?_

The Horde is bad – evil, even. She knows that. But it was home. Lonnie and Rogelio and Kyle were family. _Are_ her family, despite everything. And Catra –

Well. She was family too, but Adora had always watched for Catra more than she did for the others. Had always waited for her. Had always protected her.

Adora swallows hard. Not well enough. If she’d been better, Catra would still be alive.

Bow’s voice yanks her from her downward spiral. “Let me guess: Shadow Weaver?”

Adora takes the out, shoulders drooping. “Yeah. I can’t believe I was so _stupid._ ”

Bow shakes his head, putting a hand on her shoulder. She leans into his warmth. “Hey, if you’re stupid, I don’t even want to know what Glimmer and I are. All three of us had a hand in her escape,” he says. “Remember, we’re a team. We’re the Best Friends Squad!”

Adora forces a smile. “Yeah. Best Friends Squad,” she says, already ducking under his arm because even though it’s been moments it feels like hours, and she’s too tired to keep the smile on her face. She feels Bow tense as if to stop her and the _Let me go_ sits on her lips.

“You know we’re here for you, right? Glimmer and I?” he asks.

Adora nods. “I know,” she says. She wants to say something else, something about her and Glimmer’s fight, wants to say something about how there are things she can’t let go of, things she’ll _never_ be able to let go of, but doesn’t

Bow pauses, blinking. Then, “I was going to go practice sparring – do you want to join?”

It’s Adora’s turn to blink. “Wha – I didn’t know you knew hand-to-hand.”

Bow smiles, a sheepish thing. “Well, I don’t, not really. But I’m not always going to have my bow, and I promised my dads I’d get the basics down.” He shrugs. “They worry too much.”

And Adora doesn’t have the heart to say that _no, they worry enough_ because sometimes the world won’t fight fair. Sometimes there’s no honor in a battle, only the person who turned their back and the one who stabbed them anyway.

“Yeah,” Adora says, “I’ll join you.”

Bow smiles, throwing a fist in the air, and as they walk to the training grounds he continues to talk about the inventions he’s got going, about the small group of like-minded crafters he’s been talking with, about anything, it seems, that comes to his mind.

Adora couldn’t be more grateful.

It strikes Adora that she’s never actually _seen_ Bright Moon’s training grounds. Whenever she trained she either went to one of the small clearing spattering Bright Moon’s grounds or to Light Hope. But Bow leads them further into the castle with confident steps, and soon they’re walking through a wing Adora hasn’t seen before. It’s all slanting golden light and graceful white arches blending to blue.

Eventually, Bow leads them to a large courtyard, half carved into the mountain that houses the castle and half open to the elements. Sunlight dapples through trees, scraping across the mountainside before pooling into the courtyard and Adora stares, unable to help herself, her mouth half open.

Beside her, Bow smiles. “I haven’t been here in awhile because I’ve done the archery course a thousand times, but it hasn’t changed.”

The courtyard is mostly empty, save for the pair in the farthest corner. Adora can hear their clashing swords as they spar, echoing slightly off of the mountain.

Bow moves forward and takes his bow and arrows from his back, setting them onto one of the benches around one of the marked grassy spaces. He gestures back towards the way they came, saying “The armoury is back there – we walked right past it. I’m assuming we don’t need anything for some hand-to-hand sparring, though?”

Adora shakes herself from her amazed stupor. “No,” she says, crouching down and pressing a hand into the grass. It’s soft, the ground too – so different from the hard floors of the Horde’s training areas. How will Bow learn without the threat of a hard landing?

Bow steps past her and begins stretching but she stops him. “Not yet,” she says. “I want to see how you do without stretching.”

He nods. “Not like we can stretch before a battle, right?”

“Right,” Adora says, rolling her shoulders. She shrugs out of the light jacket she’d been wearing, tossing it towards the bench. It lands half on and half off and Bow laughs.

“Maybe after this I can see how well you do with a bow. Looks like you might need some help.”

Adora grins, something in her chest finally beginning to ease, if only slightly. “If you can move after this, that is.”

Bow laughs again and Adora strikes fast, sweeping her foot under his legs and sending him toppling to the ground.

He groans. “Unfair!”

Adora snorts. “I barely touched you.”

Bow stands, brushing nonexistent dust from his shoulders, and drops into a sloppy fighting stance. “Show me what you’ve got, soldier.”

Adora quirks a brow, grinning, and launches herself at him, slowly at first to assess his blocking. She falls into the rhythm as easily as breathing, her hard pounding a steady beat in her chest. This is a dance she knows. This is something she’s never felt lost in, never felt out of place. Dodging and ducking and lashing out, each move so ingrained she can’t ever remember a time she didn’t know them.

Bow’s reflexes are good but his punches are sloppy and without weight. He’s fast but Adora can clock his moves three steps ahead, and within moments he’s on the ground.

He looks up at her and sighs. “You’re going to kick my butt, aren’t you?”

Adora reaches out her hand. “I’m pretty sure I already have.”

He groans, accepting her hand, and she hauls him up. Adora attacks him again and again, showing him how to better land a blow against her. He’s a quick learner, and by the time they’re both panting, sweat rolling down their brows, he’s able to land a hit on her every once in awhile.

He grins at her, bright as ever. “Thanks Adora, you really helped! I can’t believe how good you are at this.”

Adora frowns. “I’m a soldier, Bow. I’ve been trained to do this since I was born.”

Before Bow can reply someone clears their throat and both of them startle, their heads wipping around.

A woman stands by the bench, wringing her hands together. “Sorry,” she says, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Adora shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. Can I help you with anything?”

“I’m Leona,” she says, straightening and giving Adora a Bright Moon salute. Adora blinks and after a moment Leona relaxes again, chuckling. “Force of habit, sorry. I couldn’t help but watch your spar, and if it’s not too much to ask, I was wondering if you’d like to go up against someone with a bit more skill,” she says, looking at Adora.

Adora pauses, assessing Leona. There’s something familiar about her easy, watchful stance, and Adora would swear she’s seen those eyes before.

“You’re part of the Royal Guards, right?” Adora asks.

Leona nods. “Good catch. Usually no one can tell with the uniforms.”

Adora shrugs. “I’m observant.” Sometimes.

“So,” Leona says, resting her hip on the bench and crossing her arms. “Want to spar?”

“Yes,” Adora says, nodding before Leona can finish the question. “Absolutely.”

Leona smiles, eyes and teeth glinting in the afternoon light. “It would be an honour, She-Ra.”

Adora breathes deeply, unable to fully keep her face from twitching at She-Ra’s name. She’s not She-Ra. She-Ra is a weapon, is a destiny foisted upon her without her permission. She-Ra is a duty, a promise, a symbol.

Adora’s just the Horde soldier who happened to find the sword.

Bow gives her a look. “How are you not tired?”

Adora shrugs. She could use some water but she feels fine, if very sweaty. “I’ve had training simulations last for days. Sparring you is easy.”

Bow grins at her and makes his way to the bench, all but collapsing onto it. Leona moves forward and Adora assesses her – sees her stocky build and the surety of her feet and grins.

Leona nods. “Hit me.”

Adora does.

Or, she tries to.

But for all of Adora’s strength and training Leona has the years and lands the first hit right in Adora’s kidney.

Adora flinches, barely taking a breath before leaping back into the fight, her pulse thudding in her ears. A giddy feeling spreads through her muscles and she can’t help the grin splitting across her face even as Leona nearly lands a punch to her jaw.

_This_ she can do.

Again she falls into the rhythm of it, noting the way Leona seems to be waiting for Adora’s strength to wane before attacking back. Slowly, Adora lets her punches become sloppy, lets her guard fall a little. Distantly she can hear Bow cheering for her but she ignores him, favoring the rush of her blood.

She doesn’t know how much time passes. Only knows the dodge-block-hit of the spar drawing her closer and closer to the rage simmering just under her skin, sparking and bubbling and warm.

Adora watches herself, watches as she lands a particularly nasty blow to Leona’s face, vaguely feels Leona’s nose crunch beneath her fist and she snarls to herself. _Rein it in!_

But she doesn’t reign it in. As Leona throws another punch she grabs Leona’s arm and, in a brutal move, twists around the older soldier and forces her shoulder from its socket.

Leona’s sharp, bitten off scream rips Adora from her reverie, the world around her regaining its clarity so quickly it makes her head hurt. She gasps, immediately letting go of Leona’s arm.

“I’m sorry!” she yells, backing away, and Bow is rushing past her, kneeling down to help Leona.

Leona looks up, meets Adora’s eyes, and _winks_ of all things. “Don’t worry, Princess,” she says. “I’ve had worse.” She stands, shooing a fretting Bow away, and holds out her right arm for a handshake.

Adora returns it automatically, gaping. “Leona, I’m so –”

But Leona waves her off, swiping a hand under her bleeding nose. “Don’t worry about it,” she says. “This isn’t the first time this shoulder has pooped out of its socket. It won’t be the last, either. Same with the nose. That was a good spar, Princess. Thank you.”

Leona walks away whistling, leaving Adora and Bow gaping after her.

A beat passes and all Adora can think is that the fight hadn’t _finished._ No one had yielded. Leona should still be fighting and Adora should be pressing her advantage, should be –

A clang rings through the courtyard and Adora whips around, hands at the ready to defend herself. When no blow comes she relaxes, her gaze resting on another soldier across the way. They’re new to the sword if their clumsy grip is anything to go by, and the sword glances off the steel plated dummy with a clang.

Adora considers. “Bow,” she asks, “can I use one of those?”

His gaze is heavy on her face but she ignores it. “Yeah, go for it.”  

Adora nods and makes her way towards one. It’s not plated but and the fabric is rough against her hands, the material sturdy. She gives a half-hearted punch and it gives more than she would like, but beggars can’t be choosers, especially when the fight’s not finished.

The wild, glinting thing that’s made a home behind her eyes and in the pit of her stomach _whines_ , eager and desperate, and Adora tentatively relaxes her iron grip on it. She punches the dummy, uncaring of anyone around her, giving in slightly to the baying in her blood.

She doesn’t transform into She-Ra. She-Ra doesn’t get to have this. She-Ra doesn’t get to have her rage, her grief, doesn’t get to claim the iron-hot pit in Adora’s stomach and transform it into something beautiful and breathtaking.

Sometimes all Adora wants to do is hit something until she bleeds. How many hours had she spent in the Horde’s training rooms, punching dummy after dummy? Well into the night, punching until her lungs burned, until her knuckles bled through the tape, until her body trembled.

How many times had Catra waited until she’d finally settled back into her skin and half-carried her back to their bed, uncaring for her sweat-soaked body, and held her until she fell asleep?

But Catra’s not here to put her back together again and Adora can’t piece together Catra so there’s nothing left to do but punch. Nothing left to do but hit something until she passes out or is called away. And maybe that’s all there’s left for her to do in general – let Angella and Glimmer point her to whoever they chose and keep punching until she’s told to stop or there’s no one left to hit. At least then she wouldn’t have to think.

She doesn’t notice she’s dislodged the dummy with one of her punches until her knuckles scrape against the wooden stake it’d been hanging from. She grimaces, bolts of pain running up her hand, and inch by inch realizes how much time has passed. The sun’s dipped behind the mountain. She’s trembling hard, sweat making her shirt stick to her back, her chest, and under her arms. Her breath is harsh in her throat, irritating the parched skin.

Adora gives a few more weak, aimless punches, muscles working on memory alone, before she can reign herself in. The glinting thing returns to its place with little fuss, and for the first time since she saw that wretched security tape she can think clearly.

Exhaustion tugs at her and she stumbles back, turning towards the castle. Water. Shower. Bed. Food can wait. A shower can probably wait too, really, and –

She collides softly into someone and her knees very nearly give out from under her.

“I’ve got you,” Bow says, already slipping her arm over his head to help her walk. “I’ve got you, Adora.”

She blinks. “Bow?”

A pause as they make their way across the courtyard. Bow’s steady beside her, his steps sure and unwavering, and Adora lets the silence stretch, her tongue too heavy in her mouth for her to care.

Finally, Bow relents. “I don’t know what’s going on with you,” he says, “but something is clearly wrong.”

Adora tries to shrug. Fails. “Don’t want to talk about it.”

Bow stiffens. “You might not want to, but I think you need to.”

Adora sighs, long and low. “I’m fine, Bow. I’m just worried about Shadow Weaver,” she says, barely holding back a smirk. Finally, the witch is good for something.

Some of the tension drains out of Bow. “Me too,” he says, “and I think after being cooped up so long you just needed to let off some steam, right?”

“Right,” Adora says, and she can practically feel how badly he wants to believe her, so she lets him.

They don’t say anything else, and by the time they reach Adora’s room her head has cleared a little more, her legs steadier underneath her. She opens the door and pauses, turning to Bow.

“Do you think Angella would let me have a lock on this?” she asks.

Bow shrugs. “Probably,” he says, eyes darting around her face, clearly assessing. She lets him. Hopes he won’t hone in on the glinting thing behind her eyes, hopes he won’t ask about the exhaustion weighing on her shoulders.

Blessedly, he doesn’t. Instead he places a hand on Adora’s shoulder and squeezes. “I’m here for you, Adora. Any time.”

Adora nods. “I know, Bow. Thanks.”

The turns away and goes into her room, closing the door without looking at him. Her room is just dark enough that she can see the shadow of his feet from under the door and she waits and he hesitates. Minutes pass.

When he leaves, Adora sighs, shoulders drooping.

She stumbles towards the small waterfall in the corner of her room. It’s decoration, she knows – not meant for drinking. But she’s checked with some of the castle engineers and plumbers and the water is fit for drinking, should she want to. And she does. Desperately. By the time she’s through her stomach sloshes uncomfortably but she ignores it in favor for her desk.

She should sleep. Eat. Do anything other than what she’s about to. But she’s waited long enough, stewed long enough, and this glinting, raging thing inside of her wants _out._ It won’t wait forever and she won’t either.

The wheels need to start moving.

She takes the datachip from the desk, fingers steady, and plugs it into a datapad. Typed in her Horde identification number and selects the ‘option’ folder. Below the short message is a string of numbers she can’t decipher but Lonnie’s lessons on technological subversion aren’t easily forgotten. She memorizes the numbers easily, then exits out of the folder and opens the datapad’s messaging system.

Before doing anything else, Adora painstakingly removes every possible connection the datapad has with Bright Moon. By the time she’s through with it her sweat has long since dried, her shirt chilly and uncomfortable, her room lit by the moonslight.

Then, finally, she types the string of numbers into the messaging system. Her message is as simple as Lonnie’s:

_I’m in._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen. writing adora and bow and glimmer is just. why are they so hard to write???? like???? also yeah i was kind of an ass to glimmer but i *promise* there's Good Plot Reason for that
> 
> also this chapter literally didn't end anywhere where it was supposed to so like. yeah lmao
> 
> anyway i listened to 'simmer' by hayley williams on repeat for this chap and wow it's really just. adore's main theme for this whole damn fic isnt it
> 
> [tumblr](https://wanderingrestlessly.tumblr.com)


	17. these quaking shoulders

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BET Y'ALL THOUGHT I FORGOT ABOUT Y'ALL BUT NOPE
> 
> shout out to patheticfrog, my beta reader, as always
> 
> still not sure i actually like this chapter but i've rewritten it enough times so here it be!
> 
> also fingers fucking crossed another month doesn't go by between uploads i swear i'm trying but grad school Be Like That sdfsadfasfda
> 
> enjoy!

The canopy above her rustles in the wind, an ever-present sound tinged with the now-familiar tang of saltwater. It seems as if nothing on this Island can keep still. There’s always movement, always sound, always _life,_ ceaseless and unrelenting.

But here, in the small clearing outside of her den, Catra is still. 

“I had a sister?” she asks, voice raspy and pathetic.

Kahi’s nod is a jerky thing, their hands reaching out as if to hug her before faltering. “Yes,” they say, their fingers playing with their necklace. “You did.”

Her chest tightens. There are so many questions to ask, so many things she needs to know, but she can’t reach them through the fuzziness in her mind. A sister. _A sister._

“What was her name?” she asks for want of something better, unsure if she even has the _right_ to ask. Her hands curl into fists.

Kahi inhales. A pause, and Catra can’t look away from them, can’t look away from the tightening of their eyes or the downturn of their mouth. “Aliya,” they say, their voice soft and fragile. “Her name was Aliya.”

Her ears twitch. She wants to know that name. She wants it to resonate with her, wants it to jog something loose in her memory, wants it to _mean something._ But it’s a name attached to a face she can’t imagine, to a voice she’s never heard, to a scent she’s never smelled.

It means everything. It means nothing.

The knot in her chest grows tighter, hotter, and she trembles with it, wrapping her anger around her like an old blanket, burrowing into it to keep the world at bay. “How’d she die?” Catra asks –  as if she doesn’t already know the answer, as if she’s not about to hear a slightly different iteration of the same story she’s heard a thousand times before.

Kahi flinches under her stare, their eyes tightening. “The Horde,” they say, their eyes flickering to the mask she still wears. “During one of the purges.”

Catra’s tail lashes harshly behind her as she reins in the urge to leap at them. “That’s not what I’m asking and you know it.”

A beat. “Protecting you,” they say. “Aliya died protecting you.”

 _There it is._ Catra smiles, baring her teeth, and Kahi shifts their weight as if to fend off an attack. It makes sense now, Kahi’s actions, Kahi’s refusal to leave her, Kahi’s whole agenda.  

“So you’re doing this out of pity,” Catra spits.

“No, I –”

“Shut up,” Catra snarls. “I don’t need your pity. I don’t need your lessons. I don’t need you,” she says, trembling. “So you can go back to your little village and leave me alone.”

But Kahi stands firm, drawing themselves out of the slight crouch they’d fallen into. “I won’t leave you.”

“Why?” Catra yells. “A promise to a dead woman means nothing.”

At this Kahi jolts, a sliver of anger appearing in those green eyes, and Catra can’t help but grin at it. _Good. Get angry._ She wants Kahi to attack her. Wants Kahi to leap at her with their teeth and claws bared, no holds barred. Her hands ache as she unsheathes her already exposed claws further before letting them settle to their normal length again.

“I don’t stay just for her,” Kahi says. “I stay for myself.”

Catra scoffs. “If you want information about the Horde I’ll give it to you,” she says. “No need to keep up this charade of caring.”

Kahi’s tail lashes as they take a deep, steadying breath. “I care about you, little one. I –”

Catra’s growl scrapes through her throat. “You can’t care for someone you’ve just met.”

“I’ve known you since you were born,” Kahi says, their voice rising but still not yelling, their body trembling. Catra flinches at the tone of it, her own mouth snapping shut as Kahi continues. “I was there for your first steps, your first words,” they say. “I –” Kahi’s voice breaks and they look down to the ground, a hiss slipping from their clenched jaw.

They shake their head, pressing their lips together, and Catra has seen that expression on their face enough times to know what it means.

“What?” she snarls. “What are you hiding?”

Kahi doesn’t say anything.

The knot in Catra’s chest tightens to a painful degree, a scream rising in her throat. “Fine,” she spits. “Don’t tell me anything. Next time you wonder why I can’t trust you, think of this moment. You give me one sliver of information and then _refuse_ to answer the context questions. Of course I’m not going to trust you, Kahi!” 

Catra pants, fists clenched so tight she can feel the blood well up from her palms. She’s in Kahi’s personal space, so close that there’s no chance she’d be able to dodge a blow. She doesn’t think she’d want to even if she could. Anything to distract from the knot in her chest and the confusion brimming in her head because she can’t trust Kahi, not really – can’t trust that they aren’t making this up despite the obvious tells they aren’t. She’s been betrayed before. She can’t let it happen again. If it means driving Kahi away then so be it.

Moments pass – long enough for Catra to regain her breath, long enough for the tense line of her muscles to abate, no longer expecting an immediate strike. Still, she keeps a good chunk of her attention on her peripherals, waiting.

Finally, Kahi shifts – a minute movement that nearly sends Catra flinching back, keyed up as she is, but she manages to keep still. Kahi takes a deep breath, seeming to center themselves, before speaking.

“Have you said your piece?” they ask, voice irritatingly neutral.

Catra blinks. “Yeah,” she says, unable to snarl it like she wants to.

Kahi nods. “Alright then,” they say. “I’m leaving.”

Catra’s stomach drops, a lump forming in her throat. “Good,” she says, crossing her arms. “About time.”

She watches as Kahi walks into the forest. They don’t look back. Their steps don’t falter. They blend into the foliage and, within moments, Catra can’t sense them.

She sucks in a shuddering breath, tears pricking at her eyes.

“Didn’t need you anyway,” she says, the words breaking in her throat, the knot in her chest no longer white-hot but still burning, still aching, still begging for some kind of release. She doesn’t know what would help, doesn’t know what would drive it away. She’s ripped everything before – her shared bed with Adora, the trees at the cliffs, her own vocal chords – nothing helps. She begins pacing, needing to move, and swallows hard.

A plan. She needs to get a plan together. Needs to figure out her next move now that Kahi is gone. She’s lost an inside source and an ally, but she’s done more with less.

There’s a mixture of runes in her den that make her feel - _something._ She’s not entirely sure what and she doesn’t want to mess with them. But there’s a wizard in the mountains who might know something. Moreover, the wizard might actually have a way to get off the Island – Glitter can teleport and Shadow Weaver can travel through shadows. Maybe this wizard can do something like that as well.

She runs her thumb over the semi-sharp edges of her Force Captain badge. She’s got a homing beacon that no one knows about and that Hordak may or may not be expecting her to use. If the wizard knows how to leave and she activates the beacon, would it be a decent enough distraction for Hordak so she can slip back into the Fright Zone? The Horde will come here, the magicats will kill them – maybe even take the Horde skipper and go back to mainland Etheria – and she’ll destroy the Horde from the inside out. Everyone happy in the end.  

Catra shakes her head, picking at the nearly bald spot on her right wrist. That wouldn’t work. She’s never been an important enough cog in Hordak’s machine and there’s a good chance he’s still expecting her back. If he’s playing the game she thinks he’s playing, then he doesn’t expect to hear back from her for awhile, if ever.

She stops her pacing. _I need to break it down further. What do I know? What do I not know? What are things I need to act on and what are things that don’t matter in the long run?_

Kahi’s gone. Kahi knows the location of this den. She should move. Should gather her meager belongings and leave. But even as she steps towards the den’s entrance she stops. Kahi said they were leaving but they never said they wouldn’t come back. She exhales, long and low. Nods. She’ll stay here for one more night and then go towards the mountains.

Immediately, she changes her mind. _I need to leave now. I drove them away on purpose. They’re not coming back._

Adora had left her without her even trying. This time, she tried. Kahi’s not coming back. The sooner she accepts that the better.

She groans and sits on the sun-warmed grass, ignoring the growl from her belly. She’ll figure out food later, especially since it was Kahi who ended up taking the leftover meat from their last kill. Her tail twitches. She could try and find Kahi’s basecamp and see if they left anything important. Could hunt. Could practice blending in with the trees. Could do many things.

But the sun is warm on her back and she’s still exhausted, running on empty, her head fuzzy and her eyes aching. Around her the trees sway in that steady rhythm of theirs, the wind not quite reaching her level. Still, it’s cool enough that she shivers with it, and soon she’ll be forced to make a jacket to stave off the cold.

She sighs and looks around her paltry campsite. Stands. She can’t sit here and wallow, can’t overthink this to the point of paranoia. Not this time. The Horde can’t hurt her here, and there’s no reason to work herself into a state like she would back in the Fright Zone. Especially when the only person who knows where she is has left her.

Despite it all, she can’t imagine Kahi giving away her location, and the certainty of it makes guilt curl low in her gut. She ignores it.  

The most she has to worry about right now are other predators. She listens for a moment, closing her eyes to focus, but doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. Whatever the wizard did to make the animals more aggressive they must still keep the same hunting and sleeping patterns.

She nods to herself. There’s plenty of things to do and she’s got time. Slowly, the ache behind her eyes lessens. She can do this.

She busies herself with cleaning the campsite and once done, climbing up into the trees to try and arrange the canopy to better cover the clearing. It’s hard, demanding work, but the physical exertion keeps her mind off of her problems, keeps her mind from tumbling down any unwanted paths.

Mostly, though, it keeps her from thinking about how she had a life _before_ the Horde, which. She can’t imagine. Can’t remember. Can’t comprehend such a thing. She’s always had flashes of things – of tall trees and wild grasses, of kind hands and a kinder voice, of some faceless magicat helping her hunt birds. Hazy and tinted by the sun. Warm.

She’d always thought they were imaginings driven by her own desperate desire to see another magicat. Her own desperate desire to be something other than the Horde’s soldier.

Who was she before the Horde?

She’s not sure she wants to know.

So she spends the day fixing and arranging things. Spends it better covering the entrance to her den to make it seem more abandoned. Spends it walking to and from the river, making note of all of the well-traveled game trails she can use that won’t give away her location. Watches, crouched under bushes, rabbits and birds and, once, a lone deer – larger than she remembers them being from her survival classes at the Horde, something almost dangerous glinting in their black eyes. It makes a shiver run down her spine, makes her fur fluff up a bit, and she’s careful to keep very, very still as the birds around her send up a few warning calls.

The deer are, perhaps, better left alone and watched out for.

By the time she stumbles back into camp, exhausted and starving, Kahi still isn’t back. She doesn’t think about it. Doesn’t keep her ears peeled for their movement, doesn’t case the area every few breaths. Instead she builds a fire and waits, staring into it as the sky slowly begins to darken.

The guilt she’d been ignoring begins to raise its head as she sits, prickling along her spine. Kahi is still hiding something, she knows, but Kahi’s never once attacked her without her poking into whatever raw wounds she could find. They’ve healed her, taken care of her, taught her things. They left their village for her.

Maybe it is time to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it’s time she accepts that they more than likely won’t betray her. But she’d thought the same thing of Adora and look where that got her. Nearly killed and abandoned on Beast Island.

 _But Kahi isn’t Adora._ Scorpia’s voice a whisper in her ears and she snorts. Of course her whirling mind would conjure up Scorpia’s voice. Her heart aches. She wishes the other woman was here. She’d know how to handle the emotions of this situation. Unlike Catra’s own clunky attempts, Scorpia always seems to know what to say.

This time is no exception because she’s right – Kahi isn’t Adora. And maybe she needs to stop comparing everyone to Adora, stop assuming that just because Adora betrayed her in the worst way means everyone else will eventually too.

If only it were that simple.

Catra’s still thinking it over when she hears Kahi approach. The sun is nearly gone, leaving long red tendrils of light in its wake, and Catra looks over the fire towards the familiar rustles. She knows Kahi is doing it on purpose – knows they’re giving her fair warning if she wants to leave, if she doesn’t want to talk.

She doesn’t want to leave.

Catra keeps her gaze on the fire, not quite knowing where else to look. She doesn’t want to see the reproach in Kahi’s eyes, doesn’t want to see their disappointment. She’s disappointed enough people in her life and knows the expression intimately. Wishes not for the first time that she could get through a conversation with Kahi without wanting to rip them or herself apart.

It’s not Kahi’s fault, really, that they’ve had a front-row seat to her dramatics. At this point she should get on her knees and grovel for forgiveness, should thank them for putting up with her. She doesn’t think that Kahi would like or be comfortable with that, though, and her pride wouldn’t let her do it anyway, so she doesn’t entertain the idea for long. So she sits, gazing into the fire, and doesn’t look up as Kahi enters the clearing.

Neither of them speak. Kahi sits on the other side of the fire, setting down a carcass – one of the too-large rabbits she’s seen plenty of since getting to the Island. They clean and skin it in well-practiced moves, and Catra is so reminded of that dusk spent with Lyra on the other side of the fire instead of Kahi that she shivers.

She doesn’t know who she would rather be with at the moment – Kahi or Lyra.

Her chest tightens in that familiar way and she knows she needs to apologize, knows she needs to at least _attempt,_ because even though she could do this alone she doesn’t want to. She’s never wanted to.

She sucks in a deep breath, wishing for courage, and says, “What was I like before the Horde?”

Kahi doesn’t look at her, their movements smooth as they begin setting the rabbit over the fire. “What do you care?” they say, their voice even.

Catra shrugs. “I was wrong, before. About a lot. Said some things I probably shouldn’t have.”

A beat passes and then Kahi hums under their breath. “That’s the best apology I’m going to get from you, isn’t it?”

Catra doesn’t answer, her tail-tip twitching, and Kahi sighs.

“Just like your sister,” they say, shaking their head. “Too proud for your own good. How much trouble has that gotten you into so far?”

Catra frowns. “Enough that I should probably know better,” she says, the words clumsy in her mouth. She doesn’t like the raw feeling coming over her, the way Kahi’s green eyes glitter in the firelight and seem to see past all of her defenses.

The rabbit smells good over the fire, the scent melding with the woods around her, and she breathes it in. She thinks a part of her knew she was missing this; that some part of her knew something vital was absent, something desperately needed, something longed and yearned for in a way that grew so familiar she couldn’t strip it from herself if she tried.

 _I don’t need to go back._ The thought is fleeting, jarring, and she blinks at it. She could stay here, in this clearing, on this Island, for the rest of her life. Could make amends with Kahi and the other magicats, could carve out a place here with people like her.

She dismisses the thought. She can’t. She won’t. She doesn’t need to be surrounded by people who only see her ghost.

“I forgive you,” Kahi says, looking at her.

Catra starts. “What?”

“I forgive you,” they repeat easily, shrugging. “You’re hurting, little one, and like any hurt creature you lash out at any given opportunity. I can’t say I appreciated what you said, but I understand why you said it.”

Catra gapes, shocked into stillness, but before she can wrap her thoughts around forgiveness she was prepared to earn Kahi tenses, frowning, their ears twitching. They stand in one easy movement, peering into the dark forest around them, their tail twitching. Catra follows suit, standing at their side, eyes squinting. She can’t see anything amiss but there’s something slightly off about the rhythm of the trees in the wind – a single beat behind the main melody, slight and not overly jarring.

Weeks ago, Catra would have missed it. But she’s been here long enough to get used to the rhythms of the Island.

Catra sneaks a look at Kahi – face stern but relatively unruffled, their fur only just fluffing up – but it’s enough to make Catra bare her teeth to the darkness around them, her own fur fluffing.

Moments later the light from their fire reflects a pair of eyes and Catra readies herself to attack as the intruder steps into the circle of light. Only Kahi’s hand reaching out to grip her shoulder holds her back.

“Tet,” Kahi says, nodding. “How did you find us?”

Tet shrugs, golden fur nearly glowing in the firelight. “You got sloppy, Kahi. That’s not like you.”

Kahi’s tail twitches but they keep their open posture. “Trying times, Tet. You know how it goes.”

Tet’s ears twitch but he doesn’t respond, his gaze dropping to Catra. “I see you’ve found the source of all the gossip going around the village,” he says, gesturing to Catra. Then he winks at her. “Nice going with Lyra, by the way. She needed to be brought down a peg.”

Catra scoffs, her claws digging into her hips. “Come a little closer and I’ll give you the same treatment.”

Tet grins, his teeth glinting in the firelight. “As lovely as that sounds, I’m not here for you,” he says. He nods at Kahi. “I’m here for you.”

Kahi steps forward, placing themselves between Catra and Tet in one smooth, unthreatening movement. “I’ve been called back to the village, haven’t I?”

At Tet’s nod Catra’s stomach drops. She’s been on the losing end of this particular scene enough times to know how it plays out.

“Sati’s orders or Lyra’s?”

Tet scoffs. “Sati’s, of course. She’s not particularly happy with you but she knows better than to set Lyra loose again in the state she’s in. The kid did a real number on her.”

Kahi grins. “She’s sharp in more way than one, I’ll give her that.”

Catra shoots Kahi a withering look, unable to gauge whether she should be insulted or not as Tet laughs.

“Well,” Tet says, pushing himself away from the tree. “As lovely as this has been, it’s time we head back, Kahi.”

There’s a beat of silence before Kahi speaks, and Catra’s pulse is so loud in her ears she can barely hear them over it.

“I don’t think I will,” they say.

Tet blinks. “You can bring the kid with you if you want,” he says, eyeing Catra. “Lyra might put up a fight but if the kid can take her once she can take her again.”

“Lyra won’t get within seeing distance of her if I have anything to say about it,” they say, voice hard.

“If Lyra has her way,” he says, “you might not get a choice in the matter.”

Kahi squints. “We’ll see.” Then they pause, ears flicking, and turn their gaze on Catra. “Do you want to go?”

“No,” Catra says, immediate and sharp, heart thumping hard against her chest, because  _this is it, this is where they leave, this is where I’m left alone again and –_

Kahi nods and turns away. “Leave us, Tet,” they say.

Catra feels her eyes widen as she looks at Kahi, her throat closing up, her eyes stinging because she’s driven Kahi to their limits today, she knows – has poked and prodded in their wounds and scars for her own benefit, taking no time for gentleness. Kahi should leave her. If Kahi knew what was good for them, they’d leave her.

And yet.

Tet’s eyes widen. “Really?”

“Don’t look for me again,” Kahi says, their tail twitching, “because I won’t be coming back.”

Tet whistles, leaning back against the tree again. “I never thought I’d see the day where you went against direct orders, Kahi.”

They shrug. “Times are changing.”

“That they are,” he muses, shaking his head. “You’d really give up everything for her?” he says, gesturing to Catra, and she has to clench her jaw against the hiss rising in her throat.

Kahi nods. “Yes.”

Another beat of silence passes between the two of them and finally Tet sighs, every ounce of tension leaving his body as he rubs at his temples. “Anything else I can do for you, since I’m already adding treason to the list?”

“Don’t tell anyone where we are. Clean up any indication of my passing through the forest today as well.”

Tet rolls his eyes. “Luckily for you I was going to do those things anyway,” he says. Then he looks at Catra and his grin softens, his eyes lighting up. “Yeah,” he says, “Sati will definitely want to see her.”

“In her own time, Tet.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, already turning away from them. “If you’re not careful you’ll miss everything with that patience.”

“And if you’re not careful you’ll find yourself in the fire,” Kahi retorts, an easy grin on their face as they watch Tet disappear into the forest. 

Catra barely registers his leaving because Kahi _chose_ her, Kahi isn’t _leaving,_ Kahi isn’t taking the out that Tet handed them on a silver platter. They’re staying here, _with her._ Despite her attitude, despite her issues, despite _her._

Kahi turns to her, the smile slipping from their face. “Little one, what –”

Catra throws herself into Kahi’s arms, hugging the magicat as tightly as she can. Kahi sways with the unexpected movement but doesn’t throw her off – instead their arms wrap around her without hesitation, their cheek resting on the top of her head.

“Little one?”

And Catra can’t help the sob that punches its way out of her throat, can’t help the tears soaking into Kahi’s tunic or the way she melts into Kahi’s embrace.

“You didn’t leave,” she whispers, clutching Kahi. “They always leave me, Adora never chooses me, no one ever _chooses_ me.”

Kahi tightens their hold, their voice fierce. “I won’t leave you,” they say. “I’m never going to leave you, little one.”

And, finally, Catra believes them.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u'd think this whole virus think would mean more time to write but somehow i have even less time than before
> 
> i'm fighting very hard the urge to just. go back to chapter 1 and rewrite everything right now immediately bc if i do that i'm never gonna finish but on the old gods themselves i'm finishing this, even if a literal month goes by sometimes without updates!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> anyway congrats to catra for finally fucking trusting kahi i'm so proud of her
> 
> [tumblr](https://wanderingrestlessly.tumblr.com)


	18. tendrils

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shout out to patheticfrog, my beta reader, as always
> 
> fINALLY i was able to carve out time for this chapter ohmyGOD. between both my jobs and grad school and then this fucking pandemic i feel like i haven't had a single moment to breathe tbh
> 
> now that summer's here i'm hoping to be able to write more. i wrote the bulk of this fic last summer working 40+ hours a week so like. i'm hoping! if i can there might even be a chapter a week again, which wow that would be AWESOME
> 
> enjoy!

She doesn’t know how long they stay like that, with her clinging to Kahi like they’re the only thing keeping her grounded and Kahi _letting_ her; with Kahi hugging her back just as fiercely, not tight enough to force the air from her lungs but tight enough to hold her steady, tight enough to make her feel _safe._

It’s a foreign feeling. Even now she’s not sure if what she’s feeling is safety but it’s warm and stable and makes her shoulders droop, makes her never want to leave Kahi’s side.

Kahi _chose_ her. The least she can do is choose them back.

Catra’s about to move when Kahi rests their chin on her head, a soft rumble filling the relative silence around them. She flicks her ears, jolting, throat tight as the sound and sensation rolls over her. She buries her face into Kahi’s neck, knowing this, _remembering_ this, and all at once she’s been here before – under this sky with grass under her feet, someone’s arms around her, holding her close, their scent warm and heavy on her tongue as they purr.

The echoes of this known-but-not-known purr rattle through her, scraping at the edge of her mind like her own claws, but before it can begin to hurt Kahi’s purr soothes it, lessens it, wraps around the sensation and overpowers it until she can’t feel anything but comfort.

She doesn’t purr back. Can’t. As if the muscles in her throat have forgotten the instinct, forced to forget after Shadow Weaver catching her in the act one too many times. But for once the whisper of Shadow Weaver’s voice doesn’t slink past her defenses. For once there’s nothing horrible around the corner, nothing frightening or horrendous or bloody. For once there’s only this moment and nothing more.

Catra basks in it.

It’s the cold, damp wind that eventually brings Catra to her senses, cutting through her fur and digging into her skin. She shivers with it, blinking blearily for a moment before she pushes Kahi away, her cheeks beginning to burn.

Kahi lets her go but doesn’t move away, their purring petering out as they grin at her.

Catra coughs, her ears flicking. “Well,” she says. “Goodnight.”

She darts into her den before Kahi can say anything, but the wind carries their laugh to her and she smiles, chest warm.

 

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

 

Catra wakes to a violent peal of thunder, lurching into wakefulness with all the grace of a distressed goose, her fur fluffed and a hiss already slipping from between her bared teeth. She breathes deeply, smelling the stone around her as her gaze flits from one darkened corner to the next, her pulse loud in her ears.

No Shadow Weaver. No Hordak. No bots. No Princesses. But there’s a current in the air that presses against her skin like thorns and she can’t relax, not until she knows what’s wrong. She takes another deep breath, scenting, but there’s nothing amiss – just the storm and the stone and hints of the foliage outside. Holding her breath, she listens for a moment, past the storm, focusing on the tunnel leading into her room. There’s no skittering of mice, no softened step of an intruder – nothing.

She hisses again, louder this time, heart beating hard against her ribs. The current in the air sharpens, almost scratching at her, and her head whips around as something moves in her peripheral vision.

Her hiss catches in her throat.

The marking on the wall are moving. Black tendrils drift lazily from the wall markings, and the sight is so reminiscent of Shadow Weaver that Catra’s blood freezes. The soft purple-red glow emitting from them does nothing to abate the panic bubbling in her stomach. Her eyes widen as she traces the now writhing lines with her gaze, the tendrils solidifying with every second, becoming more purposeful in their movements.

Something touches her foot, and she has a split second to realize there are tendrils emerging from the floor before she flinches back so hard she slams her head into the stone behind her. The pain doesn’t register – instead she leaps for the entrance of her room, clawing at the rock, barely able to squeeze through with the tendrils grabbing at her.

One tendril wraps around her ankle as she enters the tunnel and tugs. Off-balance as she is, she falls to the ground with a yell and kicks out blindly, claws digging into the ground as the panic eclipses any rational thought. Screeching, she slams her ankle into the stone, uncaring for the pain racing up her shin, only knowing that the tendrils are reaching up her leg, weighty and uncomfortably warm.

It begins dragging her back into her room, slow and persistent. Catra kicks at it with her other leg but the tendrils absorb the blow, grabbing at her other leg and rendering it as immobile as her other.

She sucks in a deep breath and yells as loudly as she can, trying to be heard over the thunder. “Kahi!”

Kahi must have already been on their way, must have already been at the entrance of the den, because they’re there in an instant, hissing at the tendrils with a ferocity Catra has never seen from them, their blue-grey fur bristling.

They pull a small silver device from their bag and fling it at the tendrils. Before it hits the tendrils Kahi is already grabbing her shoulders and yanking her away, but she’s too deeply caught by the tendrils for it to make much difference.

The device is overtaken by the tendrils the moment it comes into contact with them, beeping frantically as it’s subsumed. The beeping ends in a long, high-pitched note, and in a burst of purple-pink that reminds her far too much of Princess Sparkles, the device releases a small explosion.

Within moments the tendrils are frozen, covered by a small film of purple-pink substance. They spasm, letting go of Catra, and Kahi pulls her away and behind them, still snarling, placing themselves between Catra and the tendrils.  

Catra doesn’t bother waiting around – the moment her legs are free she bolts, dashing down the length of the tunnel and skidding to a halt at the entrance of the den. Kahi runs up a few moments later, panting, pulling Catra into a hug before she can protest.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Kahi says, repeating like a mantra, and Catra gets the feeling they’re trying to convince themselves of that fact rather than her.

“Yeah,” she says, because she is. Her skin is still crawling from where the tendrils touched her, and her head and ankle ache, but she’s dealt with worse.

Kahi moves away, eyeing her, but before they can say anything Catra interrupts.

“What was that?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Corrupted magic,” Kahi says. They step out into the rain, holding out their hand. “Come with me.”

Catra hesitates. “Where are we going?”

Kahi nods towards Catra’s room. “I don’t know how long it will be subdued. We should move.”

Catra nods, taking Kahi’s hand, and together they dart from the shelter of the den to the relative shelter of the trees. Catra is soaked through in an instant, shivering from the cold, her ankle protesting every step. Around them the storm begins to slowly wane, the next peal of thunder sounding a little farther off.

Kahi lets go of her hand once they make it to the tree line, walking a few steps before pausing at one of the trees. “Follow me,” they say, disappearing into the branches.

Again, Catra hesitates. Sure, they need to get away from the corrupted magic, but there’s lightning, and she’s not looking forward to any sort of electrical shock. But Kahi doesn’t seem bothered by it, and her head is beginning to pound, so she follows without complaint, climbing into the canopy.

The wind buffets her harder as she climbs, following Kahi as the other magicat travels through the treetops. There’s a certain rhythm to traveling this way, and it reminds her of riding skips, of being wobbly for the first few minutes of every ride before she got the cadence of the skip’s little movements down.

It’s easier than she remembers to sink into that headspace of movement, letting her body move how it needs to without her thinking about it. It’s all instinct, all movement, all timing, and she revels in the simplicity of it.

Only a few minutes pass before Kahi slows and stops, clinging to a large tree and slipping through the gap between two branches before disappearing. Catra follows without hesitation, eager to be out of the rain and wind, her hands so cold they’re going numb.

She climbs into what she can only describe as a shack. The floor, walls, and roof are made of wood, the planks squeezed between thick branches. At least half of what’s around her consists of the tree itself, the branches purposefully grown and coaxed into wall, floor, and roof shapes. Though out of the wind there are places where the rain still snakes through, a few droplets hitting her face, but all in all it manages to work.

The shelter is small – there’s a single hammock strung up between branches, and Catra recognizes Kahi’s pack as one of the bags hanging from the other branches, tied securely with rope. There’s not much else, but Catra’s sheltered in worse places. At least its relatively warm, dry, and there’s no hint of anything magical.

Kahi enters the shelter with ease, reaching up to one of the packs and pull out a few thin sheets of metal, only a little bigger than their hand. They kneel and set it up on a wooden board that’s been wedged between two other branches, creating a small table.

“What’s that?” Catra asks as Kahi assembles it into a cube.

“Our heat source,” they say, reaching into their pack and pulling out their flint. They look at her and frown. “You can come in.”

Catra starts. “Right,” she says, stepping fully into the shelter. “I knew that.”

Kahi doesn’t reply. They finish getting the setup ready, grabbing kindling from somewhere and making a flame, then feeding it twigs. Though the flame is small there’s not much space for it to warm, and between being out of the wind and rain and Kahi’s own body heat, Catra can already feel the cold being lifted from her.

“This place is cozy,” she says, rapping her knuckles across one of the walls.

“You know, Tet said the same thing when we built it,” Kahi says, rummaging through the packs.

Catra’s tail twitchies. “Tet knows about this place?” If he does, who else? It might be better to abandon it once the storm ends. They can follow the river for a bit, and then –

Kahi’s voice pulls her from her frantic thinking. “Calm yourself, little one. You, Tet, and I are the only ones that know about this outpost.”

The tension that had been gathering in her shoulders disappears. “How come nobody else does?”

Kahi pauses in their task, staring absentmindedly into one of the bags. They’re silent for long enough that Catra opens her mouth to say something, but before she can Kahi speaks.

“There was unrest, for awhile, after we arrived. There were some that were not completely satisfied with Sati’s ruling and any of her supporters. For awhile, it looked like there would be a coup. It eventually settled down, but Tet and I made a few of these outposts in secret, just in case.”

Catra shivers, still soaked to the bone, and tucks that information away for later. Kahi pulls a towel from another pack and hands it to Catra before grabbing one for themselves. They dry off in silence, and Catra looks away as Kahi changes. Not that she isn’t used to nudity, given the Horde’s fondness for communal everything, but Kahi might prefer privacy.

Before Catra can sit down, though, Kahi tells her to take off her clothes. Catra gives them a look, and Kahi returns it.

“Your clothes are wet. Take them off.”

“They’re the only ones I have.”

“Not so,” they say, reaching into the fourth pack and pulling out a lump. They hand it to Catra and she undoes the bundle. It’s nothing special – a tunic, a pair of underwear, and a pair of pants – but it makes her chest warm.

Still, though, she hesitates. Her Horde uniform is ruined beyond repair, she knows. It’s been ripped, soaked with blood and mud, and in some places torn to pieces. What little repair work she’s been able to do is shoddy at best, downright useless at worst. It stinks, too, and no amount of dunkings in the river have been able to fully wash away the sand from her first day on the Island. But it’s familiar.

Catra takes a deep breath. Familiar doesn’t mean safe, doesn’t mean useful. So she strips, taking off her mask and Force Captain badge, and puts the new clothes on. Once she’s dressed she puts her mask back on, the slight weight on her head comforting, and pins her badge on the tunic.

She kicks her old uniform to a corner. “I’m gonna burn this tomorrow.”

Kahi nods. “Alright.”

They settle on the floor together, Catra slightly closer to the little flame than Kahi. They let the silence linger for a few moments, listening to the rain and the swaying trees, before Catra’s curiosity gets the better of her.

“What was that device you used on the tendrils?” she asks.

“The wizard gave it to us before he went to the mountains,” Kahi says, motioning for Catra to stick her leg out. She does, her aching ankle in Kahi’s lap, and as Kahi wraps it with some strong looking cloth they say, “He told us the magic on the Island felt unpredictable.”

“You trusted him?”

“Sati did.”

Catra nods, understanding. “Is that kind of corrupted magic normal around here?”

Kahi shrugs, their tail twitching. “It’s hard to track that kind of magic. We don’t have any magic users, so we don’t have a sense for how big the problem is. There are a few areas on the Island where there’s a large concentration of it, but this is the first time I’ve seen it out here.”

“Great. More evil magic,” Catra says, flicking her ears.

Kahi doesn’t answer and they fall into silence. Once Kahi is done wrapping her ankle she takes back her leg and leans against the wall, her head still hurting. The little flame from their heat source begins to die down, leaving nothing but embers, and the darkness comforts her. Eventually she begins to nod off, and at one point Kahi taps on her shoulder.

“Come on, little one,” they say, ushering her into the hammock.

As she settles, though, she wakens fully, and before long her thoughts are buzzing, too many to allow her to sleep.

“Kahi?” she asks, keeping her voice low in case the other magicat is asleep.

They’re not. “Yes?”

And she doesn’t know why she always has to do this when it’s dark; doesn’t know why the darkness seems to coax this vulnerability out of her, just knows that she hates it. She can never quite make herself stop, can never seem to stop her mouth in time.

“Can you tell me more about my sister?”

The beat of silence stretches for a long, long time, but Catra waits it out. Fights against her heavy eyelids and wins. Spends time counting the seconds between rolls of thunder, ears twitching as she listens for any possible animal life.

She wants Aliya to mean something to her. Though she can’t remember her sister, she wants to have some version of Aliya to hold onto, some version to think about. Aliya died for her, after all. That’s not a sacrifice Catra can ignore, even if she doesn’t remember it happening.

Kahi sighs, a deep, heavy thing that makes Catra twitch. Their voice is so soft that Catra has to focus to hear them.

“Aliya was a lot of things,” they say. “She was brave. She was stubborn. She was quick to take offense. But she was loving. Being loved by her was like being loved by the sun. Fierce and warm. She would protect you with everything she had, even if you didn’t need it.”

Another pause. Then: “Sometimes when I look at you it’s like seeing her ghost.”

Catra sucks in a breath. “I look like her?”

“No,” Kahi says. “Not really. Her eyes were brown, and her fur was pale, like sand. She didn’t have stripes. If she looked like anyone, it was your father. But –”

And Catra lets that information slide over her, tucking it away, because the more she knows about the life she _could_ have had the more she hates herself for wanting it.

“– she was stubborn like you. Prideful like you. More than that, though, she _adored_ you, little one,” Kahi says, chuckling. “She thought you were the most amazing person she’d ever met. Once you were old enough to walk we took you on all sorts of little adventures. She taught you how to swim, taught you how to use your claws, taught you how to –”

 “– hunt,” Catra finishes. The memory is hazy and sun-drenched, so fuzzy that she always figured she’d dreamt it. “I remember that, I think. A bird, right? She –”

“– clipped the feathers so it couldn’t fly away,” Kahi says, almost breathless. “So you remember her? You remember –”

Catra shakes her head. “No, no,” she says, tail lashing. “I don’t remember her. Not really. I can’t picture her face, I can’t remember her scent. But I know there was a bird, and I know that there was someone catching it for me and then letting it go.” She sighs. “Nothing’s clear. Just impressions.”

There’s a beat of silence that Catra doesn’t want to lengthen, so she asks, “What’s your favorite memory of her?”

There’s no hesitation. “Sunlight,” they say, voice wistful. “Before the Island, before the Horde, we were mostly a nomadic people. We shared our city with the Scorpioni, who also tended to be nomads, and who were our greatest allies. The city garden was so large you couldn’t separate it from the Wandering Woods around the city. She would spend hours in that garden talking to people and strolling around. When sundown came she would climb to the top of the tallest tree and watch the sunset. She never missed one.”

Kahi’s voice peters out, but Catra can hear the smile on their face. She can almost imagine it: a tall, sand-colored magicat watching the sunset, the sky lit up pink, the moons beginning to glow brighter. It’s a good picture, all told, but the way it moves Kahi makes something in Catra’s chest tighten.

“You really loved her, didn’t you?” she says before she can stop herself.

“Yes,” Kahi says, “I did. I do.”

“Did she love you back?”

A beat. Then: “I never told her. I was too afraid to ruin what we already had, too afraid to take that chance, even if it would mean something so much _more,”_ they say, their voice breaking. “By the time I finally found my courage she was dead, you were gone, the city was destroyed, and the only future that awaited me was whatever I could carve out here.”

The level of regret in their voice makes Catra twitch. “Kahi –”

“I’m tired, little one,” Kahi says.

“Okay,” Catra says, voice small. There’s so much more she wants to know, but more than anything she doesn’t want to think, and if Kahi’s talking then she doesn’t have to. But she’s put Kahi through their paces enough over the past few days, so she bites her tongue instead.

She wonders, sometimes, what would have happened if she’d followed Adora that day. If she’d punched Adora in the arm like she always did and followed her through the hallways of the Horde and out into the Fright Zone, out into the Whispering Woods, out and out and out. They could have been together, could have gotten through whatever would have come next together, like they always had before.

If she had followed Adora she wouldn’t have met Scorpia. She wouldn’t have learned to rely wholly on herself, without Adora there to rescue her. And Adora would still be treating her like she _needed_ rescuing, like she couldn’t win a fight by herself.

Catra sighs. If she had the chance to go back and change everything, would she?

She doesn’t know.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> how many times can i say 'tendrils' before it gets weird
> 
> hope you enjoy my constant stream of 'well i can't find this info on the spop wiki time to make somethin up i guess'
> 
> its a short chapter but things are Happening In The World (as we all know) so like. yeah
> 
> also thanks to everyone who's commented thus far! i don't always reply but i promise i'm reading them and squealing over them like a three year old. 
> 
> also i am SO FUCKIGN EXCITED FOR TOMORROW AHHHHHH SEASON 5 MY DUDES!!!!!!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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